The recollections of Skeffington Gibbon, from 1796 to the present year, 1829; : being an epitome of the lives and characters of the nobility and gentry of Roscommon; the genealogy of those who are descended from the kings of Connaught; and a memoir of the late Madame O'Conor Don.

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THE

RECOLLECTIONS

OF

SKEFFINGTON GIBBON,

FROM 1796

TO THE

PRESENT YEAR, 1829;

BEING AN

EPITOME

OF THE '

I.IVES AND CHARACTERS

or THE

NOBILITY AND GENTRY OF ROSCOMMON:

i^iENEALOGY OF THOSE WHO ARE DESCENDED FROM
THE KINGS OF CONNAUGHTj

AND

A MEMOIR

THE LATE MADAME O'CONOR DON.

#

DUBLTX :
PRINTED BY JOSEPH BLUNDELL,

187, GREAT BRITAIN-STREET.

1829.

BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY
CHESTNUT HILL, MASS.

RECOLLECTIONS

FROM 1796,

TO THE

PRESENT YEAR,

IS29.

The reader will not accuse me of egotism for ..eu.v>
candid, when, contrary to the acknowledgment of other
writers, I tell him of the obscurity of my birth and the
poverty of my parents.

I was born in a rural but humble cottage on a small
farm called Fairfield, on the Glinsk Manors, in the
County of Galway. My father, who was descended
from a respectable family in the County of Cork, at
one time possessed the chief of that barony, which still
retains the name of that ancient family, well known
in and about the beautiful Fermoy as the Barony of
Clan-Gibbon. In tracing the origin of my ancestors I
find that the Province of Gibbelonian in the Italian
States is their inheritance, from which some assumed
the name of Giblon, a junior branch of which family
inherited, about a century ago, the noble seat of Bally-
giblon, now in the possession of Wrixon Beecher, Esq.,
who recently married the beautiful and esteemed Miss
O'Neill, of the late Theatre-Royal, Crow-street.

The first of my ancestors Avho landed in Great Bri -
tain accompanied William Duke of Normandy in his in-
vasion of that Empire in the tenth century, and obtained
by their valor extensive manors in the Counties of Kent,
Middlesex and Northampton, of which their descendants

B

1669

still retain a small remnant. The head of the family is
now recognised by the title of that illustrious Baronet
of Staines, (Sir John Gibbon,) in the County of Mid-
dlesex.

The celebrated Edward Gibbon, so esteemed for his
Roman History and his Letters to Lord Chesterfield, 8^c.
was descended from the same ancestors. He tells us
his father was a merchant in the City of London — that
he was born at Putney on the banks of the noble
Thames — that his mother was a Miss Porten, of the en-
chanting Richmond Hill in the County of Surrey, and
after her lamented demise, which was premature after
his birth, he was brought into life by his maiden aunt,
Avho spoonfed him for nearly nine months. However, I
pass by that honorable and revered gentleman for the
present, to give an account of the first of my ancestors,
who accompanied Fitz-Stevens into Ireland in 1172, and
obtained large manors in the Counties of Wexford and
Waterford, and afterwards, on the reinforcement of
Strongbow, aided by MacMurrough, King of Leinster,
took possession of several strong castles in the Counties
of Cork, Limerick and Tipperary. Catherine Gibbon,
the celebrated Countess of Desmond, who fell by the
side of her hoary-headed lord, in the eightieth year of
jhis age, in a sanguinary battle between the Cromwel-
lian Condons of Castlegibbon, now called Castletown-
roche, on the banks of the copious and navigable River
Blackwater, in the territory of the great MacCarthy,
was daughter of the ancient but unfortunate family from
which I am descended.

The noble ruin called the " House of Desmond," in the
town of Mallow, now in the possession of Mr. Jephson,
the representative in Parliament for that borough, de-
serves the tourist's notice, being one of the most mag-
nificent structures that antiquity can boast of. It is
situate in a beauteous and verdant glen, embracing a

multiplicity of spontaneous boons, mountain air, a salu-
brious spa adorned by the River Blackwater, and a
country delightfully diversified — besides a town, to the
credit of the respected inheritor, much and highly
improved.

From the various sanguinary commotions and civil
wars that distracted this kingdom during the reign of
Elizabeth — the paramount sway of Oliver Cromwell and
his rapacious freebooters, under the cloak of fanaticism,
and latterly, the unrelenting atrocities committed on the
natives during and subsequent to the sanguinary war
between the unfortunate James II. and his nephew and
son-in-law the Prince of Orange, such of the nobility as
were not expatriated took refuge in the woods and
forests in the province of Connaught, where thousands
of them expired either by famine, an incurable flux, or
a contagious epidemic, then called the long scarlet
fever. Amongst these was my ancestor Richard Fitz-
allen Gibbon, for whose head a large reward was offered
by Colonel Carew, and General Boyle, ancestor of Lord
Cork ; however, by changing his name to MacGib-
bonne or MacGibbolone, he evaded being apprehended,
and got married to the daughter of FitzMaurice, of the
noble house of Clare-Maurice in Mayo, a family who
only possessed a remnant of their former principality at
the time, as the Binghams and the Gores, under the
false surmise or accusation of the heads of that puissant
and illustrious family being suspected Papists, and out-
lawed for not joining the ruthless Cromwell and the
Saints under his pious guidance, engrossed the chief of
their patrimony and that of Burke the Lord of Mayo,
and which, except what was sold through the prodigality
of those unsought-fpr intruders, their heirs retain at the
present time.

In Mrs. O'Mooney's ^' Sketc\of her Ow7i Timet," she
observes, in her view from the lofty Crough- Patrick,

the wide districts in the possession of the Earls of Arrau
and Lucan, (the latter title once justly bestowed on the
illustrious heirs of Sarsfield) — " Those demesnes," adds
she, " 111 got, one day or other will be ill gone." How-
ever, to return to the subject of the family from which
I am paternally descended : the progeny by the marriage
with Miss Fitz-Maurice, by intermarriages, got settled
in the Counties of Mayo and Galway. The chief of the
Gibbon estates, which was part of the dowry of Miss
Pitz-Maurice, was lately in the possession of that great
diamond. Big Denis Browne, (recently deceased,) on
which he built a family mansion, called fto immortalize
his name) Mount-Browne. My grand-father, who mar-
ried the daughter of O'Shaughnessy, of Gort Castle, fell
in defence of his family and property, where he lived, in
a rural villa in the vicinity of Mylough, in the County
of Galway. In consequence of the undeserved outrage
committed on my grandfather, (at the head of which
was a tyrant of the name of Ormsby, well known as
Robert Ormsby, of Tubberavaddy, near Roscommon, a
notorious partisan with the celebrated Lord Santry, as
Chairmen of the never-to-be-forgotten Hell-Jire Club,
in College-green,) the land is now in the possession
of an heiress of the house of Netterville, who is (I be-
lieve) married to Mr. Gerrard, of Gibbstown, in the
County of Meath. Much to the credit of Sir John
Burke, of Glinsk Castle, (who married Miss Cicily Net-
terville, of Longford, in that neighbourhood,) and a few
Dominican Friars, who occupied a secluded convent
and a few acres of land on the Burke manors, under the
west wing of that lofty peak, called Mount-Mary, which
separates the wide demesnes of those two ancient feudal
Chieftains, (the Baronets of Glinsk Castle and the heirs
of Castle-Kelly,) which at one time comprised upwards
of twenty miles of the County of Galway, and the chief
of the Barony of Athlone, in the County of Roscommon,

tliey took compassion on the forlorn situation ol a des-
titute widow and Iter four infant children, and provided
the harbourless with a small hut on the verge of this
romantic mountain, on the site of a wood, called Cappa
Wood. In this desolate wilderness did the unfortunate
daughter of the once noble house of O'Shaughnessy
and her orphans live on the scanty produce of a barren
mountainy garden, mingling their anguish and poignant
destitution with their tears, and a multiplicity of priva-
tions. I recollect myself having seen this farm ; it was
recently held by an opulent grazier of the name of
Kyne, who died suddenly at the fair of Fuerty, in that
neighbourhood, a few years back.

My father told me that his elder brother, who was a
proficient in the common rudiments of education, eloped
from his mother, when about eighteen years of age,
and sailed from Cork for the United States. How he
could get out to that lovely country at that time, with-
out friends or money, as he was not possessed of a far-
thing when he left his mother's humble cottage but one
guinea, which had been sent her by the Catholic Bishop
of Tuam, her maternal uncle, (Doctor O'Kelly,) who
lived some time in the house of Ossy, near Glinsk,
where a man of the name of Glynn keeps extensive
nursery gardens at the present time. The mother's
grief for her husband, their property, and her son was
such, that it was impossible for her exhausted con-
stitution to bear it any longer; she fell into a fit of
despondency, and in a few weeks after the departure of
her son, expired in the arms of her faithful friend,
and the participator of her misfortunes — a foster-sister,
who never forsook her in all her complicated disasters,
till she saw her interred in the Abbey of Kilbegnad, in
the ancient vault of the Skeffington family, to whom
she was maternally allied through the O'Kellys of
Aughrim Castle, so celebrated from its memorable battle

in 1689. From this my uncle worked his passage on
board as a seaman, to that land of promise. The only
account my father had of his arrival in that country
was from Doctor Nesbitt, who practised for some time
as an eminent physician there, and visited his friends
in the County of Leitrira, where he remained but a
few weeks, as his wife and family remained in the City
of Washington, anxiously waiting his return. The
account he gave was that my uncle got married to the
daughter of a Scotch merchant of the name of Douglas,
who resided some distance from Washington — that he
was accumulating wealth, and made a most respectable
connexion on his marriage with Miss Douglas — that he
heard of his mother's death from a INIr. Fallon, the kins-
man of an ancient family of that name in the Barony of
Athlone — and that he intended to assist his friends in
Ireland in a short time. My father had another bro-
ther, who died at Fairfield, of a malignant fever, in the
24th year of his age. I never knew my poor father to
mention this brother without changing his countenance,
which he strove to conceal from his auditors or his own
family, and his whole frame undergoing that panic of
grief that one recognizes in the aspect of those Avho
are suffering deep affliction and sensation for the loss of
some worthy friend, which wealth, luxury, or amusement
cannot remove. My only sister, adds my father, who
married a farmer of the name of Magrath, in the vicinity
of Mylough or Mount-Bcllew, died, after giving birth
to three children. As it would only bring other melan-
choly recollections to my mind, and as my brother-in-
law married about nine months after my sister's prema-
ture demise, I never saw any of that family afterwards.
We were obliged, says he, (observing about my uncle,
who died unmarried,) to leave our handsome cottage at
Cappa, which was surrounded with beautiful shrubs
that sprung up on the site of that large wood sold to

pay off some family incumbrances, which were weigh-
ing pretty heavy on the estate of Sir Festic Burke at
the time. Then my brother — that brother, adds he,
who was the companion and the participator of my early,
innocent and rustic amusements, took the handsome
farm of Fairfield, watered by a beautiful river, which
proceeds from that deep moor that separates the Glinsk
manors from the small patrimony of Mr. f'D'Arcy, a
magistrate, and a respectable gentleman, allied to the
ancient family of Kiltulla, in the upper part of this great
and populous county. I think Mr. D'Arcy's rural resi-
dence is called Newforest or Blackforest. Mr. James
Kelly, a tanner by trade, possessed the house of Fair-
field, and some fields adorned with tan-holes of no sweet
odour ; when the wind blew westward, we felt it into-
lerable. James Kelly was uncle to William Kelly, of
Buckfield — a farm which they hold from the Earls of
Clanrickarde ; as also to William Kelly, now of Gar-
diner-street, who kept a spirit shop many years in that
noble seat that Oliver Cromwell threw into the posses-
sion of the Mahon family, called Strokestown. Our
residence at Fairfield (considerably augmented since
my early days) was delightfully situated on the banks
of a murmuring rivulet. My father, a few years be-
fore his death, said that the tenanti^ in the sur-
rounding villages were draining and reclaiming those
deep bogs -which inundate the adjacent pasturage, the
fog of which swamps caused contagion and typhus
fevers through the country. The people are getting
prodigiously enlightened ; nor do I think that their pro-
pensities are so vicious as they were some years back.
For instance, said my father, how many heinous mur-
ders have occurred in this country in my own recollec-
tion, the like of which are now seldom to be heard of.
At one time a whole family was murdered near Carrick-
on-Shannon j among whom was a Mr. Lawder, the

8

kinsman of the immortal Goldsmith, and the Croftons,
of Moate, near Roscommon. Several murders were
perpetrated by the notorious Anne Walker and her san-
guinary husband ; they kept a public inn or half-way
house at a place called Boxford — I believe part of the
Coote estates, in the vicinity of Roscommon. In this
den of murder, and rapacity for the goods and chattels
of others, they perpetrated, unsuspected from their opu-
lence, the most ruthless crimes ; when detected in the
very act, from the cries of a gentleman in bed in their
house, at two o'clock at night, the sanguinary husband
got off in a beggar woman's apparel, and evaded being
brought to justice for his dark offences ; but his infamous
wife was burned at a stake near that old ruin of the
Dillon family, about half a mile from Roscommon,
the county town from which they take their title. —
That Daly, who committed a rape on a girl of ten
years of age, and, from the violence he used on so
young an infant in putting his wicked desires into exe-
cution, for fear, according to his own confession, that it
would lead to a discovery, murdered her, and hid her
under his bed, in which place she was found by her dis-
consolate parents, kept a country shop near Cloughan,
in the Barony of Athlone, and suffered the sentence of
the law at the usual place of execution at Roscommon,
in the year 1780. I knew his sister, a widow, named
Madden, a respectable and industrious woman, who
lived many years on the lands of Baslick, near Castlerea,
in this county. Her daughter, an innocent young wo-
man, was, not many years back, seduced by a pious
Dignitary of the Church, not more than one hundred
miles from the See-house of Elphin. Not only that :
the Reverend Doctor took under his pious care the wife
of a man well known in the Whip Club, of the name of
Dalton. This is but an outline.

Children, said my father, of the many revolting mas-

sacres committed in this and the adjoining- counties
within these few years back, I do not recollect any
of them so heinous as the horrible murder committed
on the body of young Mr. Bellew, at the great fair of
Ballinasloe, and the chief of the gang his own domestics
and dependents. Mr. Bellew was respectably connected
sn the County of Galway, being lineally descended from
Earl Bellew, as also allied to the house of Mount-Bel-
lew, one of the first Catholic families in that county.
He lived with his father, (as single gentlemen generally
do in this kingdom,) at a beautiful seat, now in ruin,
called Drum-House, on the road leading from the vil-
lage of Creggs, on the Burke manors, to the Town of
Tuam, a Bishop's See, both in that county. Young
Bellew unfortunately accompanied his father to this
celebrated meeting, well known as the October Fair.
I think it was in 1786. Mr. Bellew got a large sum of
money for fat cattle the two first days of this meeting,
which his own cotters and the stable men of his house-
hold saw him making up in the inn where he stopped,
and which money they thought the young son retained
in his possession ; consequently, a gang (about nine) of
those fellows planned a scheme to induce the young
gentleman to come to the stable where he kept his
horses, about nine o'clock in the evening, saying that
they Avould have a fascinating young woman to meet
him. To this he agreed ; and to jog his memory,
an infamous villain of the name of Greaghan, his oAvn
stable-boy or helper, came at the appointed hour, and
sent word up by the waiter that he was below stairs,
and wished to see his young master. On Mr. Bellew
receiving the message, he desired the waiter to order
the man his dinner, which was accordingly obeyed.
When the dinner was laid before the monster, who was
bursting, like Judas, with evil thoughts, the maid who
served him went in search of a knife and fork, some-

c

10

times scarce articles at this great fair ; however, to
her surprise, at her return, though only about a minute
absent, Greaghan had the meat cut on his plate with a
large knife commonly called a jack knife, and with which
he murdered Mr. Bellew in a few minutes afterwards.
Young Bellew had asked his father's permission to go
and see the curious scenes at such large meetings,
which gentlemen about his age (not more than twenty-
one), are generally anxious to view. His father reluc-
tantly complied, but not until one or two gentlemen
who dined with them, and were enjoying themselves at
their wine, interfered, by which the unfortunate young
man was allowed to go out for a short time. He asked
his father for some pocket money ; to which he com-
plied in no pleasing terms, and threw him a purse across
the table, containing some silver and sixty guineas in
gold. On leaving the inn, Greaghan met him at the
door, and conducted him to a lonely stable in a re-
mote lane, within a few paces of the great River
Suck, which moves in all its magnitude through part of
this town, and empties its copious influx into the noble
Shannon, about four miles from Dunlow, commonly
called Ballinasloe, where the unfortunate Mr. Bellew
entered this horrible den. He was conducted to a dark
corner, in which one of those demons, named Cusack,
was seated on a bundle of straw, dressed in woman's
clothes. This villain (Cusack) was selected from the
other gang to personate a female, in consequence of his
feminine appearance, having no beard, being of fair com-
plexion, and particularly as Mr. Bellew had no know-
ledge of his exterior. Mr. Bellew advanced towards the
young lady, as he thought, to embrace her and put his
hands round her person ; but the reception he met for
his caresses was a mortal stab of a large knife in his
abdomen. He screamed, and called upon Greaghan to
come to his aid 5 but the assistance he met with was

11

the whole of the gang coming and stabbing him in va^
rious parts of the body. As he lay prostrate on the floor,
even when dead, a young man, who happened to come into
the stable at the moment, was obliged to give him three
stabs, and take his oath that he would never divulge
the secret. They rolled the body in some hay, tied it
up in a sheet, and threw it into the River Suck.

Amongst the murderers was a farmer's son of the
name of Lyons, from the village of Croswells, on the
Caullield estate near Donamore. Lyons was the only
son, and what I may call a spoiled child, of respectable
and industrious parents far above want, and how he
could bring himself to be guilty of so atrocious and
sanguinary an action, and to join such a group, who
had no stake or dependence in the country, save the
general lot of those serfs and peasants who possess no
other means but their scanty earning from one meal
to another — their residence a filthy, smoky hut, their
companions a pig, a cat, and a-half starved mangy
dog — some may have a cow, a goat or an ass, which
is driven from the wretched abode of its nominal owner,
(as it generally happens that the latter is more indebted
to the rackrenter or landlord than the animal is worth,) to
some barren moor or noxious marsh, apparently sinking
as a swamp ready to swallow in its stagnated mire the
skeleton, which, from its craving maw and the pangs
of hunger, is obliged (not that any thing delicious
is in the soil) to feed on its unwholesome weeds.
I don't impute to the oppressed peasant or rustic
that these miseries are solely caused by his not read-
ing extracts from the New Testament; far from it,
they spontaneously grow with his gi-owth : he is born in
poverty' — to comfort he is a stranger; and, inundated
in want and wretchedness, he closes his eyes in the arms
of death upon a world that afforded him no other
soothing consolation but ail the j)angs a^jd liortov that

12

Siiiddleineii, rackreiilers, rapacious tithe proctoics, and
the unceasing demands of the voluptuous absentee, can
inflict upon a well disposed people. To these misfortunes
the unfortunate Lyons Avas a stranger, as his parents
were in comfortable circumstances, and possessed that
state of mediocrity that they neither felt the pangs of
keen distress nor the sudden surplus of overgrown
wealth. The whole of this infamous gang who murdered
the much and justly-lamented Mr. Bcllew were executed
in the town of Galway, and their bodies hung in chains
in the town of Ballinasloe for many months afterwards.
In talking of the horrible murder of eighteen of the
Bodkin family, by a step-son and a nephew, near Tuam,
which gave to the perpetrators of that massacre the
never-forgotten appellation of the " Bloody Bodkins" —
the murder of Randal M'Donnell, Esq., by the noto-
rious Captain Fitzgerald of Turla, in Mayo — the murder
of Squire Reynolds of Litterfine, by the sanguinary and
cowardly Kean of Newbrook, in the County of Leitrim,
and many others, my father repeated a few days before
his death, in 1812, with as much novelty as on the days
they respectively occurred. My children, said he, my days
in this world are coming to a close ; so far you have made
me happy j poverty is no crime, let not your thirst for opu-
lence and comfort ever cause you to be guilty of a base or
contemptible action ; if you raise yourselves by your in-
dustry, as I have vei-y little more to bequeath you than
my blessing, I entreat of you never to leave yourselves
in the power of your friends, much more your enemies,
as many false friends and false prophets are abroad j
therefore, be as wise as serpents and as harmless as
doves ; don't disgrace the memory of your ancestors by
any ignoble or ruthless action ; rather receive an insult
than give one. These words from an aged and affection-
ate parent made no small impression on my mind at
the time, but from several circumstances that occurred

13

since that period, they have been doubly impressed
on it; more so, when describing the barbarotis and
inhuman murder of my brother, at his residence near
Castlerea in the County of Roscommon. I recollect one
day when living at Fairfield the observations my father
made about the Glinsk family. On vralking to the
summit of Mount-Mary, he pointed to several green
fields that were reclaimed in his time, which he said he
seen covered with heath and brushwood ; as also to some
deep pits that the late Major Waller of Rookwood sunk
to get coals, but failed, by which he lost a considerable
sum of money ; and added, that his gambling in London
and Paris was the principal cause of his handsome estate
being sold, the chief part of which was purchased by the
humane and benevolent Mrs. Walcott, the sister of
Judge Caulfield of Donamon Castle, who bequeathed
the rents of those manors for charitable purposes, and
with which the Gaol Infirmary and Charter School of
Roscommon are liberally endoM^ed. When he came
in sight of the cottage and garden wherein he was
born, he seemed greatly affected and shed tears. After a
pause of some time, " my poor mother," says he,
" breathed her last on this spot where I now sit : how often
my two brothers and only sister, now mouldering in the
grave, sported at our innocent amusement round these
ruinous walls : but why should I grieve ; what is this
world but vanity, and the longest that lives must only
consider it a dream. I have no reason to complain :
I have good children, and I know if your mother sur-
vive me that you will all endeavour to make her happy ;
she is a worthy, humane woman, a virtuous exemplary
wife, and a good mother. What would I not sacrifice,
consistently with my salvation and the character of an
honest man, for the welfare of my family; I have la-
boured incessantly for their support, and would at this
moment lay down my life for their happiness. As to

14

the Burke family," added he, " the most powerful feudal
lords at one time in this country — who possessed that
Avide district of a beautiful and diversified vale, a land
flowing with milk and honey — where is all their pomp
and grandeur now? The auctioneer's bell ringing
every other day to sell those manors that they possessed
for eight hundred years. Nothing is certain (says he)
in this uncertain world."

The first of the Burkes that gained an inheritance
in this country was Rickarde de Burgh, whose father
accompanied William Duke of Normandy into Great
Britain at the time of the memorable Norman Conquest.
For some trivial misdemeanor or levity with the v.'ife of
that puissant and illustrious Baron, Lord de Clifford,
whose father signalized himself in the holy wars, better
known as the sacred crusaders, and being in dread of
the anger of that powerful General and exalted person-
age, De Burgh, a name afterwards changed to that of
Burke, (though very little intercourse then existed be-
tween this country and England — at all events we did
not sail by steam) — young Burke or De Burgh arrived
from Wales, and, after wandering about some time,
made his way into the province of Connaughf.

Roderick O'Connor, the King of that principality,
was in need of an experienced commander at the time,
being then at war with that odroirs King, MacMurrough
of Leinster, the father of the unfeeling seducer of the
Princess of Brieffny, through whose intriguing means
this fair Empire was brought under subjection to the
British King.

The armies of these mighty Chieftains, aided by all
their feudal knights and vassals, met by appointment
near Lanesborough, in the County of Longford, where
a most sanguinary battle was fought and well contested
on both sides at the commencement 5 the armies of Ro-
derick suffered much and were ijl great consternation,

15

which caused that monarch to make a precipitate retreat
across a deep swamp, on which occasion he lo«t his
crown : it was found by one Stafford, the ancestor of
Thomas Stafford, Esq. of Portobello, in the County of
Roscommon, on whom the Prince of Ardandrew, O'Fer-
rall, at the request of the Connaught King, bestowed
some land near Longford, which his respected descend-
ants hold to this day.

Burke displayed great valour in that battle, in which
O'Connor was victorious, though thousands of his troops
were slaughtered. But what endeared him most to the
Connaught King was his gentlemanlike conduct in
making excuses for his Prince M-hen accused of pusilla-
nimity by some of the chieftains and petty princes of his
territory, amongst whom M-as the Great MacDermott of
the Rock, the head of the illustrious house of Coolavin,
O'Hara of Tyreaghreagh, and O'Doud of Tyrally. Burke
being chiefly instrumental to this triumphant victory,
which signalized the arms and puissant honors of the
Royal house of O'Conor Don, his Majesty made him a
public promise, that, the first vacancy that occurred by
the death of any of his Knights, he (Burke) should be
placed in his castle, and the estates attached thereto,
giving him at the same time an invitation to reside at
the Royal palace as gentleman at lai-ge, and appointing
him Colonel of the Legion of Honor. These great ex-
pectations of young De Burgh caused him no small
share of celebrity, which unfortunately turned to the
basest conspiracy against an aged Knight of the name
of O'Fenaughty, whose wife, a young woman, hearing
of the great inducements held out to Colonel Burke,
wrote him a letter, stating that she would have her old
husband assassinated if he promised to marry her. —
Whether De Burgh gave his assent is not on record ;
however, the promise on her part was carried into exe-
cution, as the unfortunate O'Fenaughty was most inhu-

\6

manly massacred Avhile walking in a small wood conti-
guous to his residence. That castle is yet extant, and
one of the oldest family residences, save Shane's Castle,
in this kingdom ; it is well known (from its former hos-
pitality,! cant say in them days, but in the days of the
late and lamented St. George Caulfield,) as Donamon
Castle, near Roscommon.

When King Roderick was told of the barbarous mur-
der of his friend O'Fenaughty, he wept bitterly, and
expressed aloud in the presence of his Council and the
Archbishop of Tuam, " O, God forgive me, a wicked
sinner J this base murder was committed solely through
my means, in making young Burke an oifer of the first
knighthood vacant in this province. Go," said he to
Burke, " enjoy the gift your valour deserves ; but if you
were rapacious enough to be accessary to this base con-
spiracy it will turn to thee a curse tenfold more than a
blessing."

Colonel Burke married the only daughter of the mur-
dered Knight by a former wife, and the reprobate wi-
dow was obliged to beg the country for support, held in
the execration and contempt that so base and reprobate
a character deserved ; abandoned even by her own re-
latives, the O'Malleys of Mayo. The two sons by the
daughter of O'Fenaughty divided their patrimony ; the
eldest got that part called Glinsk, on which he built that
old ruin called Glinsk Castle, now a terrific roofless pile,
haunted by a colony of rats, situate on the banks of a
small stream, a low swamp ; and the spike holes and the
ruts of old age are inhabited by a clutch of rapacious
vultures. The descendants of the younger Burke re-
tained that moiety called Donamon till the days of Oliver
Cromwell, when it was wrenched from the heirs of that
house, with the chief of the Skeftington estate, called
Kilbegnad, and divided between the Cootes of Castle-
coote, and the Kings of Bovle, the ancestors of Lopd

17

Lorton. The latter family sold their part to Counsellor
Caulfield, afterwards Chief Justice of the Court of Com-
mon Pleas, whose ancestors held these manors in our
own times ; but is at present set to a grazier of the
name of Armstrong, from Fermanagh.

Sir Ulick Burke, Bart, sold the chief of the Glinsk
estates some years back to the celebrated Counsellor
Daly, commonly called, not Peter the Great, but Peter
the Fool. His heiress married the late Charles Daly,
Esq. of Dunsandle Castle, in the County of Galway,
from whom she eloped a few months after with the
humpbacked Earl of Kerry, who died at Hampton-
Court, in the County of Middlesex, in 1816. All the
Burkes, says my father, that you see scattered through
this country, are descended from the Glinsk family ; and
the first Rickarde Burke, who married that notorious
and sanguinary woman, Matilda O'Kelly, a woman who
personated her own father, the ruthless Chieftain of
Mullaghmore Castle in the Barony of Athlone, in all his
atrocities, and who was commonly called Noula Nami-
doge, or Matilda with the Bloody Dagger, she and her
three sons, commonly called Clanrickarde, or Rick's
sons, laid Avaste the chief of the County of Galway,
which manors are retained to the present day by their
progeny, the Lords who derive their titles from their
ruthless and blood-thirsty ancestors — as Clanrickarde
and Portumna Castle; however, says he, so far from at-
tributing the atrocities of their sanguinary sires, or the
wicked deeds of former ages, to the amiable and illus-
trious Earls who inherit these ill-gotten demesnes at
the present time, I have the greatest respect for and the
highest opinion of their humanity and many virtues.

Sir Festic Burke, adds he, married his kinswoman, a
daughter of tliRt noble house (alluding to Clanrickarde),
but they had no issue. Her eldest sister mamed Lord
Dillon of Costello — her second, Robert Dillon of Clon-

IS

brock — and the youngest, John Kelly of Castiekelly,
M'ho was no Brunmwicker, but a rigid Papist. So much
for the Brunswick Secretary of that Popish house, sink-
ing with moors and marshes, called Castiekelly, near
Mount-Talbot.

" The late Rick Burke's marriage with Miss Blake of
Ardfry, or the elopement of their vicious daughter with
a son of the house of Fitzgerald, is not worth my notice,
so I pray you w^ont mention them." This was my fa-
ther's last remark about the Baronets of Glinsk Castle.

Pointing to Castiekelly, which lay some distance off,
he observed, " You have in view all that remains of the
Chieftain's greatness ; though even tha,t same is wages
of apostacy, that family swayed the sceptre of this dis-
trict for centuries ; but the downfall of Aughrim and
Athlone put an end to their ambitious and overbearing
pretensions." Foolish Denis Kelly and his wool-jobbing
at Ballinasloe, as also his imprudent marriage with a
Miss Armstrong, impoverished that noble family. It
was his own fault or he might have been married to the
heiress of Lisduff, who was afterwards Countess of Alta-
mont, and which aided nuich to the fortune of the
Browne family.

Mount-Talbot, says my father, situated on the beau-
tiful Suck, was given to the widow and children of the
unfortunate Colonel Talbot for his good intentions to-
wards the Prince of Orange while within the garrison of
Limerick in 1689. When Sarsfield discovered Talbot's
treachery, and the latter saw death was unavoidable,
he committed suicide in his cell, though having no other
instrument with which he could commit the act but the
prong of his buckle. This family is descended from the
same ancestors as those of the ancient house of Mala-
hide in Fingal, who are a junior branch of the illus-
trious Earls of Shrewsbury in Salop, at one time Dukes
of Tyrconnell in Ireland, and claim the same preced-

19

ence here as the Dukes of Norfolk in tlie British Peerage.
The demesnes of Mount-Talbot and Castlekeily join,
though the former is in the County of Roscommon and
the latter in the County of Gahvay ; both divided and
beautified by the River Suck, which flows majestically
and rapid in this neighbourhood.

The handsome seat of the Cheevers family is in this
neighbourhood 5 their progenitors were Viscounts
Mount-Leinstor, and resided in Naas Castle in the
County of Kildare, of which they Mere deprived in that
memorable year of unprecedented plunder and ruthless
rapacity, 1688.

I am obliged, adds he, to say something of the Dillons,
who, on their apostacy, Avere created Lords of Clon-
brock. One circumstance connected with this short-
lived family happened in my own time, and which I re-
gret having heard no instance of before, that is, a father
living to see his successor of age. He had a long con-
test some years back about the Earldom of Roscommon,
but was as strenuously opposed by the late Viscount
Dillon, of Costello, in the County of Mayo, who had just
renounced Popery to get a renewal of his outlawed and
ancient titles. The late Pat Dillon, who married Miss
Begg, of Beech-Abbey, near Carrick-on-Shannon,
claimed and got the title, for which he was solely in-
debted to the Lord of Lough-Glynn, one of the most
accomplished Peers that ever graced the high titles of
that noble family, and who was maternally allied to the
Earls of Lichfield in Staffordshire.

Mount Bellew, the noble seat of Michael Dillon Bel-
lew, Esq., maternally descended from the noble house
of Nugent, of Riverston, is within a few miles of Clon-
brockj it is, without flattery, one of the most magni-
ficient country seats in this kingdom, embracing sub-
lime and spontaneous boons, aided by the unrivalled
taste of the late Mr. Bellew, who took no small pains

20

to make this residence one of the most elysian, pictu-
resque, and diversified in the kingdom, adorned with
lakes, vista views, pleasure grounds, and as noble a fa-
mily mansion as this empire can boast of.

I asked him about the Trenches of Ballinasloe, and he
seemed reluctant in his answer ; after a short pause, he
said he did not wish to say any thing about them.
They are a haughty clan, and some what litigious since
fortune favoured them, or at least since the sanguinary
revolutions that distracted this unfortunate country
rescued them from obscurity; under other circum-
stances they might, like their ancestors, hide in the prin-
cipality of the Dutch Prince. Notwithstanding being
residents here these many years, deriving their support
from the soil and the natives of this country, like the
Hyena, nothing could tame them ; they were always
ready to side the bad and unrelenting governments
that oppressed the people : the more penal the disgrace-
ful codes that passed into a law, the more apparently
they enjoyed it. Previous to the franchise being granted
to Catholics in 1793, the heirs of that house, in com-
pany with Eyre of Eyre-Court, returned themselves for
this county, which then w^as- a close borough ; the
boon of 1793 they opposed, as they knew that they
would be hurled from the representation, and so they
were, of this great county, whose freemen are more
worthy than to be any longer represented by illiberal
and self-aggrandizing bigots. I cannot say much adds
he for these revered sages who fill that honorable sta-
tion at the present day ; but they appear to be some-
what more liberal in their views than the Trenches ; in
many instances they thought by their influence, (I wont
say by the bribery of a hut washed up with a bucket of
lime, and a small garden,) to prevail on some to become
Protestants ; in this they failed, save very few who would
become any thing for the same wages. The connex-

21

ions they formed were wortliy of sucli an alliance, so
that this race is as austere, coercive, and as obnoxious
to the natives as the first possessor of that family who
got as his reward the verdant plains in and about Gar-
bally. The first of that family raised to the peerage was
the late Baron Kilconnell, who joined the memorable
auction of 1800, and took his title from the ruins of
an old Popish abbey. So distressed were the mighty
peers that they had no other foundation to ground their
title upon but that wrenched from the ancient house
of Clancarthy. All I have to add, says he, is, that I
never knew one of the name esteemed in this country,
much more these of Dunlow, or the Ashtowns, who
took pleasure in keeping the natives in their present
state of degradation and oppression by opposing Eman-
cipation ; and as a reward for their unrelenting hosti-
lities, there is not one of the pious group nor hardly
one connected with them that does not enjoy a sinecure
at the expense of the country; however, says he, I think
the Trenches are much on the decline as to having that
influence with which these Cromwellian and Williamite
aristocracy since they got into power swayed, under the
cloak of loyalty ; the whole country is incensed and ar-
rayed against these self-created monopolists, who have
ruled and governed this kingdom to their own advan-
tage for upwards of one hundred years, and sold it lat-
terly to the highest bidder for pensions, titles and pri-
vate emoluments, rich Bishopricks and large sinecures.
In this he alluded to the union of 1800 as a gene-
ral observation. There are several Kellys, or O'Kellys,
in the district of Croffin and Athlone, but none who
claim more feudal honors and respectability than
O'Kelly of Tycoola, who, with the ancient family of
Turrock, are acknowledged to be the lineal descendants
from the great and illustrious O'Kelly of Aughrim
Castle. Many others are considered spurious illegiti-

22

mates, or descended from unacknowledged and remote
junior branches ; some of them became apostates to
enrich themselves at the expense of the lawful heirs,
and others to obtain leases under rich Sees.

The O'Fallons, of Ballina, in this neighbourhood, are
a respectable old family, and are connected Mith the
noble house of Roscommon, and many others of equal
claim. The unfortunate dispute which occurred some
years ago between this family and one of the sons of
Mount-Bellew, in which the latter was killed, caused
the most poignant grief in the minds of both families —
the victim of this duel having been most universally and
deservedly lamented. But, adds my father, it is lament-
able that such sanguinary meetings are allowed j and
indeed, says he, I think the demon of darkness is aiding
and assisting the parties who promulgate and sanction
such barbarous and disgraceful exhibitions iu a Christian
country. Duelling, by which so many valuable lives
are sacrificed, destroys the peace of many benevolent
and highly respectable families during their career in
this world ; and in no instance more so than on the pre-
mature demise of the justly-lamented Mr. Bellew, of
Mount-Bellew.

The unfortunate Colonel Dillon, of this neighbour-
hood, at his residence called Johnstown, met with no
better end, but under different circumstances from that
of young Bellew. Mr. Dillon, I must confess, like
many persons moving in high life, set a bad example to
his own serfs and domestics, by keeping a kept mistress
in his house, by whom he had a family, and I believe
married while labouring under his wounds. This rab-
ble, who lived on his bounty, conspired to take his life,
and attacked him in bed at night, where he received
such mortal and deadly blows as caused his death in a
short time after. The chief of the gang was executed
in the Town of Roscommon, I believe in 1805. Colonel

23

Dillon was descended from a junior branch of the noble
l»ouse of Clonbrock, a good soldier and a kind land-
lord. His son recently married the daughter of Sir
Richard St. George, Bart., whose brother was most
barbarously murdered in the same neighbourhood in
1816. In consequence of so many ruthless atrocities of
this nature having occurred in this barony (Athlone),
it is one of the last districts 1 would recommend any
peaceable family to reside in.

I asked my father which were the most ancient and
respectable Kellys in this barony. His answer was that
the head of the Protestant aristocracy of that name were
those of Castle-Kelly, Cargins, Kiltoom, Mucklin, and
Churchborough ; the Catholics are those of Tycoole,
Turrock, Scregg, and Ballymurray. As for the Barony
of Athlone, says he, I wish to leave it as God left the
Jews

A lady in this barony, whose name I will not mention,
deserves, for her base treatment to her own daughter,
to be exposed. The daughter disgraced herself in get-
ting pregnant by some low menial in her father's esta-
blishment, and then her cruel mother locked her up in
a garret room till starvation put an end to her sufferings
in this world. Scenes of this kind, adds he, are revolt-
ing to the feelings of those who have the fear of God in
their hearts, but those who have not are capable of
feeling no remorse for any thing base or degrading.
We have very few instances of this kind in Ireland : the
only subject that has any connexion with the latter, that
I recollect, is one horrible circumstance which occurred
in the lower part of this county, (alluding to Galway,)
not many years back, and that in a family highly con-
nected. The daughter of a country squire was unfor-
tunately enamoured of the son of a rustic farmer, con-
venient to her mother's residence ; her respected father
paid that debt to the grave which we must nil yield our

M

frame to one day or other. It appears, said he, with
tears of compassion in his eyes, that the unfortunate
youth, who was only nineteen years of age, was seduced
by the young lady to whom I allude to come to her bed-
room window, which looked into a small pleasure gar-
den, on the ground floor, after the family had retired to
rest. However, the young lady's mother got a hint of
what was going on, which she kept a profound secret
from her daughter, as well as the rest of the family, till
it was time tor every person in the house to retire to
their different apartments. She told her daughter that
she must change her bed for that night, as she wished
her eldest son, who was not well, to occupy her bed
room. The unfortunate daughter seemed at the moment
to labour under the most painful sensation, and with no
small reluctance was obliged to yield. AW the doors
were locked, and not one of the domestics were allowed
to leave the house. The mother seemed to watch her
daughter, and never left her for a moment. The lights
were put out, and the ruthless and sanguinary son took
his station to commit as base a murder as ever disgraced
the annals of this or any other country, for a crime, it
seems, not committed, and of which he himself was so
often guilty. Any thing but chastity, I might add, was
inherent in the prodigal and debauched family from
which he was descended. As for his mother, I know
but little of her obscure pedigree. But I pass her by,
and let the dead rest ; her spirit is fled, and she knoAvs
long before this if she were guilty or accessary to the
premature death of the unfortunate boy, who fell a vic-
tim to the subtlety and wantonness of that imperious
family. When the night was somewhat advanced, the
foolish and imprudent rustic came to the window of
the apartment where this young lady generally slept,
and threw a little sand against it. Her brother rose
immediately and threw up the window, to which the

25

young man unfortunately advanced, thinking, as we
must suppose, that all was right, and that no other but
the young lady was going to receive him. But, alas 1
he was much and fatally deceived, as the young lady's
brother thirsted for blood, and spilled it profusely. He
took a deadly aim at his unsuspected victim with rather
an over-charged blunderbuss, and in consequence of the
object being so close, blew his body into atoms. The
mutilated carcase remained where it fell, till carried
away next morning by his disconsolate friends. The
affliction of the parents and friends of the deceased may
be better conceived than described. Unquestionably,
from what I understand from a person who knew the
unfortunate youth from his birth, he was as %vell-dis-
posed a boy as ever lived, and as free from vice. It

seems the seduction was solely Miss 's own doings,

through the instrumentality of a female domestic, who
was continually bringing messages backwards and for-
wards. In a few days after the cruel death of the
young man, who met an untimely grave through
the wanton inti"igue of this vicious young woman and
her haughty friends, this ruthless-minded brother and
his frail sister went to Galway, where he agreed with a
sea captain to take her to one of those colonies in the
Northern Ocean ; and the sooner some others of the
same breed are sent there the better for the good of
female morality. I could be more explicit, adds he, on
this subject, but, to spare the feelings of some of the
great ones, I pass it by for, the present.

He gave me a long history of the Abbey of St. John,
near Athlone. The noble Abbey of St. John the Bap-
tist, says he, was endowed in the days of St. Patrick, the
Apostle of Ireland. The situation was worthy of such a
seminary ; it was built on that lofty eminence, now in
the possession of Mr. Hodson, called the Manor of St,
John, which he refined, or corrupted from having too

JS

26

much Popery, to that of Hodson's Bay. The situation
is most enchanting and diversified : a dechvity on one
side, and on the other the noble and copius Shannon
water and its stupendous cliffs. Here nature has been
more than prodigal in her boon on the verdant and
Elysium plains in and about the sacred ruin, at one
time, with all due solemnity and in the days of pure
Christianity, dedicated to the greatest man born of wo-
man, John the Baptist. It was for centuries the sanc-
tuary wherein prayers were offered, from the rising of the
sun till it disappeared from this hemisphere to another
region. But, alas ! it has long since been converted
into a den of thieves, and nothing remains of its former
magnitude, admirable and costly architecture, but the
archetype, and one or two lofty spires, occupied by a
few daws and some vultures. The annual pattern, held
here on the 25th of June, is generally attended by a
great concourse of people. The concavity of the roof-
less edifice is converted into a burial ground — a privilege
at one time granted only to the shrine of some very emi-
nent persons of the priesthood, or some noble families,
who, by their worth and long claim to feudal honours,
or some liberal endowment, obtained that boon to which,
under other circumstances, they dare not presume, nor
would be admitted. But since the days of the cele-
brated Walter Devereux, the favourite gallant of the
Virgin Queen, who was the first who made inroads on
the monastic manors and pillaged the church in this
kingdom, every plebeian and obscure upstart assumed
the privilege of establishing his family vault within the
sacred walls of this sanctuary ; — even several Protestant
families, who were bound by their solemn oath, and
who were prodigiously well paid for taking the said
oath — or, I may add, a long catalogue of oaths — as
nothing else would qualify their pious souls ; nor should
any person be so absurd as to accuse their revered

27

memories of any sordid view — the monopoly of the
goods and chattels, or to move the landmark of their
neighbours, — though they did believe, and were bound
to do so, in the idolatry of their predecessors ; and the
remnant that the sanguinary sword of the ruthless
assassin, or the hidden dirk of the rapacious freebooter
and the intruder, spared of the Catholic faith; yet,
strange to say, the chief of those pious Protestants, or
Knoxonians — as many of them followed and retained the
sacred creed and sanctified edicts of the evangelical and
orthodox Jack Knox, who perverted not the land of
promise, but the land of fanaticism, Scotland — allowed
their mortal and tawny shrines to be stretched m the
same grave with pagan Papists. In several of the
monasteries these pious triumphs are idolized; but I
call them sanguinary revolutions, which threw into
their unexpected possessions the extensive inheritance
of the right owners.

However, I will pass by these observations for the
present, to give an abridged sketch (which undoubtedly
would be a ludicrous subject for Cruikshank) of the
multiplicity of novel scenes to be witnessed in and about
the noble ruin of the Convent of St. John, at the annual
meeting, on the 25th of June ; it is within a few miles
of the strong garrison town of Athlone, in the County
of Roscommon. At first view, or on ascending the ver-
dant and conspicuous hill, on which thousands are con-
gregated together to offer their devotion to St. John, a
stranger, not acquainted with the peculiar hilarity of
the Irish peasantry, would undoubtedly think the whole
group were labouring imder a complication of mental
affection and insanity, to which the human frame is so
subject. But far from it : I could assure him, said ray
poor father, I never, in the whole course of my life,
bought a dearer bargain than I did at this very pattefn.
The country simpletons who meet here for their holy-

28

clay amusement are generally mixed with all sorts and
siZeSj and particularly the knowing ones from Athlone,
which, from the cheapness of its markets, is always
filled with an eccentric group of sharpers Who, say they,
(the countrymen,) can outdo an old soldier ? Athlone
is well known as the jiensioners' garrison. Here you
see one man selling his pig, which is roaring all the
time ; having been brought up as one of the family, and
seeing itself under the transfer bond of conveyance, it
sheds salt tears at parting with the friends and associates
of its early days ; it feels as much^as a Foundling Hos-
pital boy would at parting with his County Wicklow
nurse. Among the other commodities for sale are goats,
jack asses, horned cattle, young fillies, flax, yarn, apples,
gingerbread, a prodigious quantity of young scallions,
and salt herrings, which are profusely given (by way of
collation) by the young swains to their sweethearts.
After the repast is over, dancing commences on a plat-
form, arranged for the purpose, in several booths, in
which those of mature years join, as well as the beard-
less youths and lasses of the adjacent country. Here
you behold a group lamenting and panegyrising their
deceased friends — enumerating their many virtues, and
the loss their posterity sustained in their premature
demise — and cursing their fate for having been so
unfortunate as to survive them. As this is a general
mart for doing penance, you behold several on their
bare knees, with long beads suspended fi'om their fin-
gers, and their lips moving, counting their Rosaries,
dedicated to the Baptist, and beseeching his intercession
that their manifold sins might be forgiven. When you
pass these scenes, you meet a batch of riotous tinkers,
jumping over sticks, adjusted at a certain height from
the surface ; the man jumps first, and the bride, with
apparent diffidence, next. This qualification legalizes
the marriage, and the happy pair are led in triumph.

29

with music playing and horns blowing, to proclaim the
union through the whole assembly. These, with many
other ludicrous exhibitions, save a few skirmishes be-
tween different clans, such as the O'Kellys and the
O'Mooneys, put an end to the great and riotous pattern
of St. John the Baptist.

The noble family of Dillon, well known as the Lords
of Costello Gallen, in Mayo, and the Dowell family, have
large estates in this neighbourhood, with several beau-
tiful and romantic islands on the River Shannon, which
forms into one of the most enchanting and picturesque
inland oceans, not to be equalled in any part of Europe ;
it is well known as Loughree, and separates the Counties
of Longford, Westmeath, and Roscommon. The Hod-
son family, who reside here, are maternally allied to the
celebrated and immortal Goldsmith ; and the '' Deserted
Village," on which he was so prodigal in praise, is just
in view from the noble but ruinous Abbey of St. John.
The Shannon at this point is considered about fourteen
miles broad.

The family of Mr. Kelly, in the neighbourhood of St.
John, at a rural seat called Killtoom, is highly respect-
able ; as also the Dowell family, at an ancient seat called
Gort.

Screggs, the admired residence of Edmond Kelly,
Esq., a short distance from the great road leading from
Athlone to Roscommon, deserves to be particularly men-
tioned. Mr. Kelly is descended from a junior branch of
the house of Turroch ; and though his patrimony is not
extensive, he has managed his limited rent-roll with
judicious but gentlemanlike economy ; so much so, that
he keeps a respectable equipage, a hospitable table, and
is able to relieve many meritorious but indigent objects
in and about his rural habitation. Mr. Kelly married
Miss Lambert, of Milford, in the County of Galway, the
daughter of John Lambert, Esq., by the amiable and

30

accomplished Miss Burke, the youngest daughter of Sir
John Burke, Bart., of Glinsk Castle, by Miss Netter-
villc, of Longford, near Mount-Bellew. This honourable
union brought Mr. Kelly connected with the Baronets
of Glinsk Castle — the Burkes of Cleranbridge, and the
Burkes of Meclick — the Lamberts of Haggard, Creg-
clare and Castle-Lambert — all in the County of Galway.

Ballymurry, the handsome seat of Captain Kelly,
which commands a delightful view of the Shannon,
adds much to the diversified sceneries in this neigh-
bourhood.

Moate-Park, the ancient seat of the Murray family,
after which it was called Ballymurray, but of which they
were most unjustly deprived by the sanguinary revolu-
tions into which the unlamented house of Stuart
plunged this unfortunate country, is for upwards of a
century in the possession of the Crofts, or Crofton fa-
mily, to which, having become extinct from male issue
some years back, the family of Sir Hugh Crofton, of Mo-
hill, in the County of Lcitrim, claimed a hereditary
right : but Edward Lawder, Esq. of Kilmore, near El-
phin, who was maternal nephew to Sir Edward Crofton,
as also the kinsman of the esteemed late Oliver Gold-
smith, of the Elysian Auburn, on the banks of the Shan-
non, in Westmeath, and whose father was barbarously
murdered in that county, changed his name from Law-
der to that of Crofton. He got possession of the house
and estates of Ballymurray, and after a long litigation
between him and the other branches of the Croftons, he
married the daughter of an attorney of the name of
Croaks or Croker, by whom he got a large fortune,
which enabled him to pay a bench of lawyers, (who ge-
nerally flock about a man of fortune or expectations on
these occasions,) and some family incumbrances ; being-
eased of these pestiferous tormentors, he offered himself
as a Candidate for the County of Roscommon, Avhich in

31

these days was nothing better than a close borough be-
tween the Cootes of Castlecoote, the Kings of Boyle, and
the Sandfords of Castlerea. Sir Robert King, after-
Avards Lord Kingsborough, the new Baronet, (Sir Ed-
ward Lawder Crofton,) and Mr. French of Frenchpark,
appeared on the hustings as Candidates. Sir Robert
King being the popular candidate, the contest lay be-
tween French and Lawder Crofton : the dispute ran
high between the parties, and some old spleen was re-
vived, in v/hich French was upbraided of a gross fraud
said to have been committed by one of his family while
treasurer of the county. The ripping up of these old
sores in a public Court-house, threw such a stigma on
the character and so wounded the feelings of the
Frenches, that the dispute could not be settled without
a hostile meeting ; consequently the unfortunate George
French of Endfield, not long married at the time, sent
a message to the new Baronet of the house of Lawder.
They met at the back of tliat old ruin called the Castle
of Roscommon, where, on the first shot, the unfortunate
George French was mortally wounded. What added to
his torture was the amputation of his leg from the thick
part of the thigh, which was afterwards carried to. a
small Church, not quite finished at the time, a short dis-
tance from the house of Frenchpark, where it remained
but a few days till the body of the unfortunate George
French was closed with it for ever in the same grave.
This, said my father, did not end their misfortunes, for two
other brothers of the house of French met with a prema-
ture death, being drowned, during a dreadful storm, on
their passage from Parkgate to Dublin, and one of them
only a few days married to the rich heiress of the house
of Cloughan, in the barony of Athlone. This threw the
property into the possession of Arthur French, of Do-
minick-street, wine merchant, the only surviving bro-
ther, and not long married to a Miss Magenis of the

32

North. To return to the Croftons, adds he, they were
any thing but happy. King and Lawder Crofton were
returned at this election, after a great deal of human blood
inundating the county. Even the old pump and jambs
of the gaol did not escape the uncontroulable mob that
joined the heir of MoatePark. "Any money," said the
ringleader of the lawless mob of the town of Roscom-
mon, aided by a number of the barony boys, " for the
head of any of the Toobeheen men," alluding to the
Frenchpark freeholders. The late Sir Edward Crofton,
Bart, the eldest son of Lawder Crofton, married the
daughter of the late Earl of GalloAvay, of Gallowayshire,
in Scotland, sister to the Marchioness of Blandford, an
amiable wife and a good mother. The unfortunate Sir
Edward got rather irritated in consequence of being
obliged to sell a portion of his estates in the County of
Limerick to Baron O'Grady to pay off some family in-
cumbrances, and for a useless and distempered stud of
horses purchased at one of the embarrassed auctions of
the late Duke of York. Sir Edward was fond of Royal
blood, but never was man so completely taken in in his
English mares. These annoyances preyed on his mind
to such a degree, as also some exorbitant expenses he
was at in building that noble mansion called Moat-
house, (which I believe he never occupied,) that his.
mind could no longer bear those mischances and dis-
appointments. Being haunted by some evil thoughts,
after kissing the M^hole of his lovely family, and coming
in from the pleasure grounds where he had been walk-
ing, to know if the children had dined, and being an-
swered in the affirmative, he walked into the school-
room, and, melancholy to relate, after bidding them
adieu for ever, shot himself in a small grove a short dis-
tance from his own house. So rash an act in so honor-
able and respected a gentleman astonished many, and
plunged a large circle of friends and relatives into a state

33

of grief and affliction easier to be conceived than de-
scribed. His amiable widow. Lady Charlotte Crofton,
and her young family, at present reside in London,
where they occupy a splendid mansion in Montague-
square. Moate Park is delightfully situated ; it is about
two miles from the town of Roscommon, and is adorned
with a magnificent mansion, recently built, surrounded
with groves, enchanting vista views, some beautiful
ponds, and a diversified country which combines all that
is sublime and beautiful.

It would be unkind in me, in " My Sketches" of such
parts of this country as I have seen, not to say a few
words of the handsome and justly admired seat of the
Mapother family, in the immediate neighbourhood of
Roscommon. I am maternally allied to this family ; my
great-grandmother, Eleanor Mapother, was a daughter
of that house, of which I will give a sketch in another
page, when tracing the genealogy of my maternal kin-
dred. Kiltevan, the residence of Henry Mapother, Esq.,
is called after the antique monastery from whose inmates
it was wrenched during the Viceroyship of the cele-
brated Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, at one time the
favourite Lord of the Bedchamber to the revered Queen
Bess, and whose head came to the block for incon-
stancy, but perhaps chiefly through the subtlety of the
notorious Lady Nottingham.

The first of the name of Mapother who came into this
empire accompanied Lord Essex in the capacity of page,
dressed up in such fine trappings and gold as we see
Master Charley Gore, Master Cosby of Stradbally-hall,
or Master Sewell, in our times. But 1 have to inform
the reader that Master Mapother had a more endearing
claim upon my Lord Essex, and that his consanguinity
with royalty was not by any means inferior to that o^
tha celeba'ated seducer of Lady Astley, of the County ot"

34

Norfolk. Though the sons of Kiltevan are not honoured
with those mighty titles that grace the illegitimate
armorial escutcheons of the former Dukes of Richmond,
Grafton, St. Alban's, and many others that the licen-,
tiousness of the times sent forth as incumbrances on
the country ; yet, it must be confessed that their deport-
ment and urbanity, since they became possessed of a
moiety of the abbey lands of that great ruin which
stares you in the face on passing the road from Lanes-
borough to Roscommon, as if still impeaching the
memory of those, many years gone to meet their reward
in another world, for the barbarous and inhuman atro-
cities unrelentingly committed within its walls, are
highly to be commended. These lofty havocs and reclin-
ing steeples, which have outlived centuries, continue
extant, to stigmatize with execration the odious memory
of their pilferers and assailants. However, to finish
my account of the heirs of the Mapother family : —
They undoubtedly did not join in the horrifying enor-
mities carried on in extirpating the unfortunate inmates,
though they accepted part of the spoil j and even to
this day they retain the faith of their ancestors — the
apostate Queen Bess only excepted. It must be sup-
posed that they took the auction of the church property
in their time into their serious consideration, and said
to themselves, as persons who have no hereditary inhe-
ritance in the country, we may as well accept and
participate in those robberies as the plebeian and
rapacious adventurers who followed (at a craving dis-
tance) in the train of the Lord of the Bedchamber, and
the long catalogue of other sanguinary Governors which
the foul and easterly winds blew into this unfortunate
and persecuted kingdom. It is acknowledged by those
, who are not strangers to this family, that they are
descended from one of the illegitimates of her Majesty
Queen Bess — whether by Lord Essex or Lord Leicester,

oa

I cannot say ; but it is obvious that the unfortunate and
basely murdered Prince of Breffny has no affinity to
this family, as Captain Mapother was a grown boy at
the time that the annals of Elizabeth's reign Avere justly
sullied with the ruthless and barbarous murder of the
unfortunate youth in St. James's Palace. She loved
him ; but he had not the precaution to dissemble, and
to throw that veil of innocence over their intrigues and
levities that culpable and glaring immorality carries in
its train in the present age. After Essex laid waste the
chief of the Province of Connaught, he engrossed almost
all the Church Lands for himself or his friends ; amongst
whom was Mr. Mapother, who got a large tract of
land, bordering on the River Shannon, in addition to
the Manor of Kiltevan, of which the heir of that house
was deprived in the days of the Usurper, and another
moiety in the sanguinary Revolution of 1688, which
was bestowed (for signal services and by grace especial)
upon Corporal, not Casey, but Sandes, who, it seems,
set an example by crossing the Shannon, in the autumn
of 1689, during the memorable siege of Athlone. The
progeny of Sandes retained those manors till within a
few years back, when they were sold by auction, in
Dublin, and purchased by the late Edmond Corr, Esq.,
of South-Park, in this county, to pay the .extravagant
expenditure of the last heir of that unfortunate family,
well known as Sheriff Sandes. This Sandes paraded
the country afterwards as a common mendicant. At
one time, said my father, I recollect him to ride such
another half-starved pyeball as Goldsmith describes in
his account of Fiddlehack, an old horse he got in
Cork to carry him home, after gambling all that was
saleable on his person in that great seaport, a few
months previous to his proceeding to London. The
Mapother family are connected with the Lanes, Earls
of Lanesborough— the ancient family of the Skef-

36

fingtons, of -Kilbegnad Castle, near Donamon, now
extinct — and latterly with the O'Conors of Ballinagare,
who claim their lineage from the illustrious and royal
house of O'Conor Don. It is by a connexion with the
Skeffington family that I am remotely allied to the heirs
of the Mapother family. The reader may be assured
my mind is free from egotism when I mention any thing
of my own friends, or of those with whom I may be
connected by the ties of affinity.

About two miles from Kiltevan is Hollywell, tlie
noble seat of the Gunning family. This enchanting,
and at one time truly hospitable residence, gave birth
to that excellent and generous Irishwoman, the justly
lamented Duchess of Hamilton, afterwards Duchess of
Argyle, and to the late General Gunning. Bryan Gun-
ning, Esq., the father of the gallant General and Lady
Argyle, accumulated a large fortune, which the pro-
digality of his son at the gambling table, and latterly
his seduction of the Avifc of an opulent brewer, who
resides in the Borough of Southwark, near London,
almost totally exhausted. General Gunning's only
daughter, the celebrated Miss Gunning, to whom the
world is so much indebted for the valuable production
that issued from her highly cultivated mind, married
Major Plunkett of Kinnard, in this county, by whom
she had a large family of both sexes. She retired from
the world, a few years previous to her lamented demise,
to educate her children, at Long Milford, in the County
of Suffolk, where she died, to the great grief of her
husband, children, and a numerous circle of the first
nobility in the United Kingdom. The remnant of the
Gunning estates, now in the possession of Gunning
Plunkett, Esq., is considered to be worth about £2000
per annum ; and in a few years, when the mortgages of
General Gunning are redeemed, will amount to nearly
£6000 annually. Several manors of the Gunning estates

37

were purchased by an opulent weaver of the name of
Mitchell, who kept bleach mills j of which Castlestrange,
and some other lands near Roscommon, now in the pos-
session of that family, form a part ; the late Lord Hart-
land had another moiety ; and a portion was held by an
eccentric of the name of Blakeny, well known as old
Blakeny of Holly well, near Roscommon.

Derm, the handsome seat of Henry Corr, Esq., is in
this neighbourhood ; as also Rocksborough, the seat of
a Mr. Irwin, who is connected with the Veseys of the
County of Galway, and the Fitzgeralds of Clare.

Beechwood, the seat of Daniel Ferrall, Esq., and
Martinstown, the ancient seat of the Davis family, with
many other rural villas, surround Roscommon, which
makes it a pleasant and delightful neighbourhood, and
where a man of moderate fortune, from the cheapness
of labour and the adjacent markets, could live in respect-
able style upon a sum that would hardly keep an old
maid in wigs, paint, and false bottoms or corsets, in
London.

Carraroe, the beautifiil seat of Joseph Goff, Esq. joins
Roscommon. Mr. GofF was many years treasurer of this
county, in which important situation he gave general
satisfaction as a gentleman, a man of honor, and possess-
ing the purest integrity ; he married Miss Caulfield, the
eldest daughter of Colonel Caulfield, of Benown, in the
County of Westmeath, by whom as yet he has had no
issue. His only brother, the Rev. Mr. GofF, the respected
Rector of Tallaght, in the County of Dublin, is his heir-
at-law. There is nothing remarkable in the town of
Roscommon : it is built on one of the finest plains in
Europe, or perhaps rather in a valley — on one side bor-
dering on a marsh, which is abundantly supplied with
water of the purest and most salubrious flavor. The
main street is wide and crowded with respectable shops j
a spacious court-house, and the remains of one or two

gaols built on the Dillon estate, now in the possession
of the Earl of Essex. The Castle of Roscommon was
built in the fourth century by Charles 0'Conor,the ille-
timate son of Roderick King of Connaught, by a maid-
servant of his palace at Ballintobber, of the name ot
Moran. She was remarkable for her exemplary deport-
ment, though she yielded to her Royal master; and
what made it more heinous in the sight of the Church
was, her living in a state of adultery with the King, he
being at the time married to the daughter of O'Neill,
Prince of Ulster, but by whom he had no issue. The
Queen being informed that one of the Maids of the
Court was pregnant by his Majesty, got into a great
passion, and sent for a Scotch witch to consult her if
it could be possible to cause an abortion or protract
the birth. The infamous witch informed her Majesty,
that by knotting nine hazle rods and fastening them to
the gable end of the castle, until they were cut asunder
this Garouge Moran (which was an appellation she got,
according to the Irish language, owing to her being low
in stature or a kind of dwarf,) would never be delivered
of her painful burthen. Whether the witchcraft of the
reprobate fiend had effect or not I cannot say ; but one
thing must be credited with no small astonishment : that
the vmfortunate Garouge Nevorane, or Moran, when
her accouchement took place, which was in a wretched
hut some distance from the Castle — having been obliged
to fly from the vengeance of the Queen and Clergy, who
were incensed at her for bringing disgrace on, and set-
ting an immoral example to the inhabitants of the dis-
trict and the King's household, it being a rare thing in
those days to hear of bastardy or adultery, and such as
were known to be guilty of this offence were obliged
to appear bareheaded and barefooted, wrapped in a
white sheet, in the Church, go on their knees, and ask
God's pardon, the Priest's forgiveness^ and beseech the

3d

whole congregation to pray to the Throne of Mercy to
forgive them their ahominable sins — the unfortunate
Garouge Moran suffered incessant pains for nine days,
during which period the child's right hand was sus-
pending from the womb. The matron who attended
her might not be as expert or sober — (I say sober, as
they seldom, only on cases of necessity, di'ink any thing
but the double distilled essence of gruel) — as the group
that is to be seen every day at the Rotunda expecting a
call, or a recommendation from Doctor Cantwell as an
experienced person that understands the sweetening of
coral. But to proceed to my account of the birth of
Charles O'Conor, afterwards King of Connaught: —
When every experiment failed, and that the lives of the
mother and child were despaired of, the old matron
who attended her took it into her head to go to the cruel
and jealous Queen, and to sound her Majesty respecting
the abject and forlorn situation of poor Garouge, under
the semblance of soliciting aid. The Queen was taking
her usual walk in a verdant lawn opposite her palace
when the old matron accosted her Highness in the most
flattering language, begging her Mightiness to send
some relief to a poor woman that was after being con-
fined. " What is the woman's name ?" said the Queen :
*' Garouge Moran, please your Majesty/' replied the
simple-looking matron, " who has been delivered of a
fine boy." This news so enraged the Queen, O'Conor,
that in a frantic fit she took a hatchet, ram to the gable-
end of the palace, and cut the nine hazle rods into bits,
cursing the infamous Scotch witch who deceived her.
Poor Garouge was immediately relieved from her pains,
and brought forth the celebrated Charles O'Conor, who
had a red hand, by which he got the name of Cahel
Crough Dergh, or Charles with the red hand. While
reaping oats he heard of his father's death, threw away
his hopk, and came to the palace, where he was received

40

with acclamations and crowned by the people as King of
Connaught. From Charles is descended the illustrious
heirs of O'Conor Don and O'Conor Roe; the former
are descended from the lineal branch of royalty, who,
on the extinction of the house of Cloonalis or Ballin-
tober, are lawfully recognised as the heirs of the house
of Ballinagare — and the latter from a junior branch of
the O'Connors of Castleruby or Tomona; both seats are
in this county. On the O'Connors having been expelled
from one of their Castles (Roscommon), in which that
family built the noble monument of antique architec-
tecture, well known as the Abbey of Rosconnnon, in the
days of Queen Elizabeth, (it is now in ruins,) the Manor
and Castle were given to the Lord of Kilkenny-West,
in the County of Westmeath. Though those Lords (the
Dillons) were Catholics, they did not scruple to accept
and join in the base frauds and open robberies committed
on the ancient nobility of this kingdom at the time,
under the malicious pretext of not considering the Virgin
Queen the lawful heir to the CroAvn of these realms.
Undoubtedly the chief of the Irish nobles refused
swearing allegiance to a Queen that both Houses of the
British Parliament passed Bills to exclude, as being a
bastard, and born while the laM^ful wife of the King was
residing in the vicinity of London, and whose mother,
Anna Bolleyn, was found guilty — I wont say on the
clearest evidence, but by a Jury of her own country-
men, for there was not one Irishman among them —
of committing fornication with menial servants and
strolling musicians ; and in pursuance of that sentence
she was publicly executed. However, I leave such
tragic and disgraceful recollections to more competent
judges to treat upon, and return to the Dillons, of
whom I Avill say a few words, for the information of the
reader. The Dillon family, who are of French extrac-
tion, accompanied one of the sons of William, Duke of

41

Normandy, from France into England, near the end of
the eleventh century j but from the turbulent state of
the British Empire at the time, though zealous and
rapacious adventurers, their patron found it almost im-
possible to give either of the two brothers a permanent
inheritance in the vicinity of the Court. Kent or Sus-
sex they preferred, being the most tranquil districts;
but as their wishes could not be complied with, the
Prince allowed them, as Gentlemen at large, an honour-
able stipend about his person. The eldest brother of
these Dillones or Dillons died unmarried j the youngest,
who held a high post in the army, married the daughter
of the Mayor of Salisbury (de Clifford), in the vicinity
of which city the family resided till the heir of their
house accompanied King John (so celebrated for grant-
ing Magna Charta) into Ireland. During the residence
of the Monarch in this kingdom, he stopped at his
splendid Castle, partly built in the sea, and surrounded
with all the picturesque scenery, that, in spite of the
sanguinary revolts, civil wars, base assassinations and
conspiracies, turned the most verdant and delightful
country under heaven into a seditious arsenal of rapa-
cious plunder for one party, while the other. Hindoo-
like, who reclaimed the soil, suffered the most horrify-
ing privations, rapine and massacre, at which, all (savt^
a reckless heart) must recoil with those poignant feelings
of sorrow for the havoc, misfortunes, and epidemic con-
tagion that raged, and levelled those who escaped tlie
dagger of the unrelenting murderer and the intruding
freebooter, with those in the same grave who fell in
defence of their common country, habitation, property
and family.

However, to return to King John. While at his
Castle at Carlingford, in the County of Louth, attended
by Dillon, De Courcy, and other nobility of his Courf,
and to which the whole of the Irish Princes and No

G

42

bility were summoned to pay their homage to the Brl-'
tish Monarch, the great O'Neill refused to acknowledge
his authority ; in consequence of which John bestowed
the title of Earl of Ulster upon his favourite. Lord De
Courcy, whose progeny are now Lords of Kinsale, in
the County of Cork, At this time Monsieur Dillone or
Dillon got married to the daughter of MacMahon,
Prince of Down, and the brother-in-law of the great
MacGuire, Prince of Fermanagh. The wife of Dillon
got for her dowry the extensive manors called Castle-
Dillon, now in the possession of the Molyneux family ;
and a more woi'thy or honourable individual never
graced the escutcheons of that illustrious and esteemed
family than the present inheritor. Sir Capel Molyneux,
Bart., whose wide demense comprises the chief part of
the County of Armagh. The various revolutions that
sd frequently occurred and distracted this country ex-
pelled the Dillons, at the time that the heads of Mac
Mahon and MacGuire came to the block, on pretence of
being suspected Papists, and not loyal to her sacred
Majesty Queen Bess ; but on the arrival of Essex as
Lord Deputy, they got possession of the abbey lands of
Kilkenny- West, in the County of Westmeath, from
which they expelled the persecuted Friars, with as much
cruelty as we read of the sanguinary Rochfords, in the
annihilation of the noble abbey of Multifarnhaiu, in later
years. We must, however, make some excuse for the
Rochfords, who were, what is well known in that county,
Cromwellian Protestants — a class of fanatics more mer-
ciless in their revenge and rapacious in their thirst for
the goods and chattels of their neighbours, than their
more liberal brethren, who retain (not like the pious
Bishcip Magee) the Thirty-nine Articles, established by
Bishop Burnet and others, as a rule of faith for the Pro-
testant Liturgy of our Established Church — a Liturgy
I revere, as holding many excellent precepts and sacred

43

admonitions to aid us to obtain salvation. Another
branch of these Dillons got part of the abbey lands of
Screen, called Lismullen, near Tara, in the County of
Meath. The government of Lord Essex was disgraced
by holding out such base inducements and rewards to
his adherents; amongst whom there were few could
exceed the unrelenting and barbarous Dillons, although
professed Catholics, in all the inhuman rapine and
oppression that disgraced their sanguinary time. While
one son, with various ti'oops of brigands, ransacked and
laid waste Westmeath and the suburbs of Athlone, the
other made himself master of Roscommon and the chief
of Mayo. What clemency could the natives expect,
•with General Bingham on one side, and Colonel Dillon
on the other ? Many of them starved in the deep moors
and high mountains of Mayo, while others were immo-
lated from less torture by the sword or the gibbet. —
Dillon of Loughlin, commonly called Lord Dillon of
Costello, kept a regiment of horse and foot at his own
command, and ready at his nod to fly through the coun-
try with fire and sword, disinheriting such country
squires as were not able to give battle for their own
protection, and engrossed the whole of their property
to himself, with the exception of a small stipend he
allowed such villains as were abandoned enough to do
any thing base, and lead the van for the rest of the free-
booters to put their atrocities into execution. Among
the property that fell into his hands in Mayo are the
abbey lands of Ballyhaunus, at one time the greatest and
richest Augustinian Friary in that district — Bacon, Urler,
Kilmavee, and several others in the neighbourhood of
Swineford, Gallen and Cloonmore. Though these depre-
dations were committed about two hundred years back,
the successors of those Lords, even in our own times, not
being satisfied with making themselves masters of the
fee-simple, also retain the tithes of the Church. From

44

the house of Loughglin several other families have de-
scended ; some became extinct, others fell into obscurity,
and very few of their progeny retain much landed pro-
perty in that province — the Lords of Loughglin only
excepted in the present day.

The most respectable Dillons arc those of Bracklon
or Belgard Castle, in the County of Dublin ; and the
Dillons of Lung are of the same stock. These of Lision,
Dillon's-Grovc, Hollywell, Farmhill and Mullin, are
descended from junior branches. The Dillons of Cloon-
brock, Mount-Dillon, Cappa, Johnstown, Coolbuck,
and the Baronets of the holy Roman Empire in Meath,
are immediately descended from the Lords of Kilkenny
West, in 1622 created Earls of Roscommon.

The father of Wentworth Dillon, the celebrated
Historian, was the first apostate in this family. The
unfortunate man was much embarassed at the time,
and he bartered the faith of his ancestors for a renewal
of some outlawry which was promised him by Lord
Strafford, who was the godfather of his son, and after
whom he was called Wentworth ; but the unfortunate
Strafford did not live to see his promise carried into
execution, as the ruthless Ormonde and others appeared
at the bar of the House of Lords against him, and ac-
cused him of those high crimes and misdemeanors
which brought his head to the block : he was soon after
followed by his royal master, commonly called Charles
the Martyr, who suffered the same fate. As to the
Earl of Roscommon, his death was premature and awful :
he was killed by a fall on a narrow staircase in fhe old
town, commonly called the Irishtown, in the city of
Limerick. An old pensioner who came to his Lord-
ship's assistance, asked him if he were departing this life
a resigned Protestant ? His Lordship squeezed his hand,
from which the judicious inference was taken that Lord
Roscommon died a pious Protestant j however, the man

45

died from the effects of gluttony, commonly called
simple drunkness. We cannot consider any great hap-
piness to be in store for those who depart this life in
that statCj it being denounced by the Church one of the
seven deadly sins. This was the first and last Pro-
testant Earl of Roscommon.

The seat of the Reverend Oliver Carey, HazlcAvood ;
Mount-Prospect, the residence of Major Browne ; Rock-
savage, the residence of the Ormsby family ; and Cas-
tlestrange, the magnificent and justly- admired seat of
Thomas Mitchell, Esq. all in the vicinity of Roscom-
mon, deserve being particularly mentioned as com-
manding the highest panegyric from the writer of the
elysian and rural beauties with which the vicinity of
the highly-improved town of Roscommon abounds.
Roscommon is situate about eighty miles west of
Dublin, in a beautiful country, the soil of which is
luxuriously productive of all the necessaries of life, em-
bracing these natural gifts of which very few countries can
boast, having many local advantages, and being within
a few miles of the great River Shannon, and only four
miles fi'om the beautiful and copious Suck ; both navi-
gable rivers, adapted for every kind of factories, flour
and|bleach-mills, which would be considered in England,
and other populous countries, no small importance in
rendering paramount advantages by commerce, public
trade, wholesome beverage, and in beautifying in its
serpentine course, a country upon which heaven has
profusely bestowed so great a gift and so inexhaustible
a source of all these boons that diffuse manifold bless-
ings on a country, as unquestionably Ireland is ac-
knowledged to be, enjoying and participating in no
small degree in these great favours so bountifully
lavished on this district, and on no part of it more
so than on the verdant and luxuriant plains of

46

Roscommon. The late Mrs. Walcott, a daughter of
Mr. Caulfield, of the house of Donamon in this neigh-
boured, bequeathed liberal donations for charitable pur-
poses in this town, which is chiefly expended on the
paupers of the County Gaol and Infirmary.

Castlecoote on the River Suck is within four miles of
Roscommon ; it is one of the first manors obtained by
that Cromwellian family in this country. Colonel Coote
persecuted the natives with the same malignant vehe-
mence that his kinsman. General Coote, did in the revo-
lution of 1688. From this family are decended the Cootes
of Coote-hall near Boyle, the Cootes of Belamont Forest
in the County of Cavan, the late Sir Eyre Court, so cele-
brated for his victories over Tippo Saib, (and other
circumstances, which, for the sake of his noble relatives,
I wont mention,) the late Lord Castlecoote of Leopards-
town, in the County of Dublin, and Sir Charles Coote,
Baronet, of Ballyfin, in the Queen's County; those who
took a lordship from the old ruinous Castlecoote, are
extinct. The late Baron of that title, who was a cele-
brated pugilist, died without issue, and his disconsolate
widow, the daughter of Sir Joshua Mcredyth, Bart, was
recently married to the Earl of Milltown, of the County
of Wicklow.

Tubberavaddy, for many years tlie scat of the Ormsby
family, also adorned by the beautiful Suck, is within two
miles of Castlecoote. These manors, in former ages,
were in the possession of the family of Skefiington, well
known as the Skeffingtons of Kilbegnad Castle, in this
neighbourhood, from which the illustrious Earls of
Massareene, of Massareene Castle, in the County of An-
trim, are lineally descended.

Colonel Ormsby possessed himself of the exten-
sive estates of Tubberavaddy, during the time that the
country was convulsed by the sudden and sanguinary
revolution of the odious and execrable usurper ; he and

47

Paul Davie?, of Cloonshanvillej were governors of this
county, and amongst their statutes and mild edicts, was
that of putting persons travelling without a pass to in-
stant death. For this purpose a gibbet was fixed in the
lawn fronting the splendid mansion built by a former in-
heritor, but then converted into a den for Ormsby and
his merciless and worthless brigands, well known in
these days of rapine and sanguinary atrocities, as Orms-
by's bloody hangmen, or body guards. The ancient
Britons, in our own times (the memorable 1798), in their
sacred crusades through Wicklow, Wexford, and some
parts of the County Down, were not by any means guilty
of half the barbarous massacres (though many an old
woman cursed them for giving a short swing or a
finishing pill to their son or husband,) as the unrelent-
ing monsters under the control and command of Colonel
Ormsby of Tubberavaddy. On his coming to reside at
his new residence, his first act of grace was to order
these freebooters, and at whose head he ranked himself
as commander-in-chief, to attack and surround the
abbey of Fuerty in this neighbourhood, put the inmates
to death, and possess themselves of all that M'^as portable
in and about the sacred edifice. Here was a scene that
almost baffles those witnessed by Captain Clapperton or
poor Mungo Park, if they were alive to relate them. The
convent was full of aged and feeble friars, who fled
from other parts, in consequence of the persecution and
fanaticism of the times, when neither life, chastity, re-
ligious vows, nor sanctity, was the least protection j
when the parent was inhumanly butchered at the
head of his own table, surrounded by his innocent and
youthful family ; when the wife and the daughter were
torn from the husband and the brother, and made the
victims of the most brutal and heinous passions, to
gratify the concupiscence and lustful desires of these
fiends of hell, extant in the persons of a drunken

48

and irreligious soldiery. However, to end my account
of the cruel and barbarous murders committed under
the command of the mighty Cromwellian (Ormsby), at
the abbey of Fuerty, where upwards of one hundred
aged clergymen were immolated, to the no small exulta-
tion of the perpetrators of so abominable and so detest-
able a crime, I ask the reader, was, what is generally
termed and recorded as the cruel Irish massacre, any
thing like this ? I say no. With respect to the Irish
massacre, much as I abhor such barbarity, it occurred
when the inhabitants of this country were not so en-
lightened as they are in the present age, and when their
passions were excited by a long and merciless persecu-
tion, and from the inroads of low and rapacious robbers,
genteelly termed intruders, the very dregs of the aban-
doned, and of all that was infamous and notorious in
such great towns in England, Scotland, and many parts
of the morose and morbid Dutch settlements, as volun-
teered to eradicate the native Irish, and possess them-
selves, under the ludicrous handicap auction of the
spoils, not of war, but the most voracious and blood-
thirsty robberies that ever disgraced the days of Nero
or Caligula. In this predicament, suifering all the com-
plicated misfortunes, privations, and cruel rapine that
ever were felt, and indeed unjustly, by the inhabitants of
any country, was Ireland plunged during the execrable
and excruciating days of Oliver Cromwell and his tor-
turing agents. As to the abbey of Fuerty, not a soul
ever escaped the conflagration ; and Colonel Ormsby,
even without the pretext of a conscript from the mock
judges in higher authority, established his claim to the
manor as a reward for exterminating Popery. Of these
he possessed himself, as well as the manors of Grange,
Glan, the abbey lands of Tulsk a borough town, with
many others, in addition to that ancient and noble seat,
well known on the banks of the Suck as Tubberavaddy.

49

The grandson of Colonel Ormsby, well, or rather
notoriously, kno^\^l as Ribbard-Nagligernagh, far ex-
ceeded his grandfather in rapine and the most unre-
lenting barbarities on the inhabitants of this province,
from the terrific exterior of his armour, long spurs,
steel cap, decorated with various war-like instruments,
suspended from all parts of his reprobate person — such
as pistols, scimetars, bosom and side daggers, dirks, and
a swinging broad sword about a yard and half long,
mounted on a large black charger, with a long tail, big
ears, a prodigious head, and a voracious open mouth,
girded with no small quantity of leathern straps, and a
heavy burden of the cumbersome trappings such as
worn by the Cromwellian troopers in those days. From
the gingling of his accoutrements, he got the appella-
tion of Ribbard- Nagligernagh, which, according to the
English language, is Robert with the gingling tackles.
When the neighbouring rustics heard of his being
Papist hunting, they generally made their way to the
woods and deep moors with which the neighbourhood
of Tubberavady, Glinsk, and Mount-Mary abounds.
Robert Ormsby was a member of the Hell-fire Club, as
also Member of Parliament for his own rotten borougli,
(another Penryn) called Tulsk, a wretched, deserted, and
straggling village, incumbered with a dark melancholy
ruin, the spoils of the ruthless Ormsbys themselves : the
chief walls, and the chapel, now converted into a bury-
ing ground, is extant, and occupied by a few vultures,
one or two screech-owls, and, in consequence of its being
contiguous to a small stream, to which the generality
of noxious reptiles are partial, a dangerous colony of
rats. The last morning that Robert Ormsby, who was
an only son, passed at the romantic Tubberavaddy, he
witnessed the execution of three unfortunate brothers,
the sons of a poor widow, who lived no great distance
from the famed mansion which became noted as being

50

liis residence. Their names was M'Clabby, and their
only crime was meeting the monster, Robin, before
breakfast. Amongst his edicts and injunctions was
the well-known proscription, that any person meeting
him in his public walks before breakfast hour, should
forfeit his life, by instantaneous death. Amongst the
victims, which were many, were the three M'Clabbys. —
Their unfortunate, aged, and widowed mother, hearing
of their awful and melancholy situation, ran from her
cabin, fearless of the character and sanguinary extermi-
nation of this vile demon in human form — the rope was
adjusted round her sons' necks — they were on their
knees, and surrounded by a troop of his guards; she
threw herself prostrate before Ormsby, praying that he
would not put her sons to death ; but all was useless ;
the three brothers Avere hanged beside each other. The
mother viewed the tragic scene with apparent uncon-
cern, till her youngest son, aged about sixteen, began
to work strongly in the pangs of death, at which she
exclaimed, in a loud voice, " Son of God, I consign into
thy hands the spirit of my three sons, and I invoke thy
vengeance on the perpetrator of so cruel, so sanguinary,
and so unjustifiable an act against thy omnipotence,
and against all laws human and divine : vengeance and
justice is thine, and through thy great example, O Lord,
I forgive my enemies." The mother of Ormsby, who
Stood in a window, and the daughter of the mercenal"y
and ruthless Tyrrell of Tyrrellspass, hearing the piercing
language of the disconsolate wido\A', were, for the first
time, struck with compassion, as the unfeeling mother
was, without exaggeration, from her own bad council,
worthy of so base a son : she even expressed her regret
at so rash and vindictive an act, but her remonstrances
were useless. Robin, as he was called, set off for Dub-
lin to attend a summons from Lord Luttrell, who was
Secretary to the Hell-Jire Club -^ but on reaching the ad-

61

mired hill of Lucan, for centuries the manor of the
Sarsfield family, his horse, coming in contact with some
loose stones, threw the monster, where he lay to rise no
more, thus putting an end to the life of one of the most
cruel tyrants that ever outraged the laws of God and
man, or persecuted an unoffending people. His name
is never mentioned in the County of Roscommon but
%vith execration and horror.

On the demise of the unlamented Ribbard Nagliger-
nagh, a junior branch of that family, the Ormsbys of
Grange in this county (which manor has been recently
purchased by that celebrated money-lender called the
Irish Jew, Jack Ferrall, of Bloomfield,) became heirs of
the large estates of Tubberavaddy. Far from being pos-
sessed of the vindictive disposition of their predecessor,
they displayed every kind of good feeling and fellowship
towards their neighbours and tenantry ; however, their
prodigality brought the chief of these manors, obtained
in the days of rapine, sacrilege and sanguinary atrocity,
to the hammer ; and, save the narrow patrimony of the
verdant glen about four miles from the town of Roscom-
mon, has passed into strange and more economical
hands. Counsellor Ormsby who was knighted, and well
known as a most respectable gentleman in Ely-place,
was descended from this family, as was Captain Ormsby,
whose widow keeps a respectable boarding-house, dur-
ing the seasons, at Bath and Cheltenham, also the Go-
vernor of the Four Courts Marshalsea in Dublin, and an
old maiden lady who recently died in Sackville-street,
and bequeathed her no small hoard to the wife of a foot-
man, who gained some ascendancy over her mind, of the
name of Geoghegan, and the mother of John Geoghe-
gan who absconded a few months back after committing
forgeries to no small amount on the Bank of Ireland,
and for whom a large reward was offered; but the
dandy apothecary evaded justice, and is now living in

52

t

comfortable circumstances in the United States. His
mother, who, unexpectedly, was raised from trucking
about in a noisy kitchen, to which the mild woman —
for surely she is far from being vulgar ! — contributed in
no small degree, is now, bless our stars ! enjoying the
luxury of a carriage j and the city cavalcade and fa-
shionable equipages of the metropolis are adorned with
all that old age and long service, added to the list of
superannuation, of a bending vehicle of antique exterior,
well known to shopmen as part of the moveables of the
late Mrs. Ormsby, now occupied by her amiable and
accomplished successor, Mrs. Ormsby O'Geoghegan, of
the old Mall in the City of Dublin.

About one mile from Tubberavaddy is the village of
Athleague, the ancient seat of the Lyster family. The
late Mrs. Rumble, the rich heiress of that Cromwellian
family, after the death of Captain Rump, or Rumble, was
smitten in her old age — an age far beyond the gay years
of the Virgin Queen, which Lord Leicester tells us was
sixty-three, when her Majesty was in the height of her
amours ; but Lord Essex and he differs, as the latter
says that her Majesty was then crooked in her mind as
well as in her virgin body ; but Mrs. Rumble far ex-
ceeded that age, as she was sixty-nine, when smitten
with the manly form of a shopkeeper in Dame-street, of
the name of Talbot, in whose house the old lady took up
her winter quarters. Mr. Talbot's good sense led him
to think that the old woman was only doating, when her
folly and weakness was such as to prompt her to pro-
pose marriage to a man, such as he considered himself
to be, about forty years younger and so much below her
in family claims and inheritance. Mr. West, the bro-
ther of the Alderman (not of Skinner's-alley, but of
Skinner-row,) who was shopman or partner in the
house of Mr. Talbot at the time, hearing of the old lady's
property, offered himself to her notice, which soon ter-

53

minated in that memorable union, which, indeed, as-
tonished many.

I knew, says Mrs. O'Fegan of Pill-lane, old Alderman
Truelock, of Capel-street, whose marriage caused no
small merriment, when, in his grey-headed years, he
took it into his head to marry a tall young woman with
a pair of rolling black eyes. At this time the oXAJirelock
was seventy-six, but in a fit of jealousy, for w^hich he
had not the smallest foundation, he attempted the poor
woman's life, and when he missed fire, he took another
Truelock of his own make and blew off his skull. Not
so with poor Mother Rumble : she had every reason to
be jealous of Master West, and who could blame a
beardless boy to be disgusted with an old, infatuated wi-
dow of seventy, though she settled the whole of her pa-
ternal patrimony upon him to the prejudice of her own
needy relatives — several of these Lysters in the barony
of Athlone, from which the wife of the revered Baronet
of the Black Rock, and many other respectable person-
ages, claim their lineage.

Mr. West, on his happy union with the widow Rum-
ble, changed his name to that of West Lyster, under
which we find him gazetted as a Magistrate of the
Counties of Galway and Roscommon, " the first of the
Skinner-row family, though ranking high amongst the
Davy M'Cleerys and the Judkin Butlers of the Crooked
Building," observes Biddy O' Flanagan, "that ever was
appointed quorum in the diversified principality of the
great O'Conor Don." Mr. West enjoyed very little peace
while a resident on the Lyster estates in the County of
Roscommon. The Lyster family, united as they are with
the Kellys, who are the leading gentry or aristocracy
of this district, saw the unequal match of quite a
beardless boy, the son of a mechanic who raised himself
by his industry, and, to rate him at the height of his
opulence, only a shopman or partner with Mr. Talbot

54

himself — ^granting that shopkeepers or tradespeople iii
this country assume, by a thousand degrees, more con-
sequence than they do in Great Britain, and giving them
a long catalogue of the revered and puissant lineage
from which they claim their descent, either in the igno^
ble descent of the usurper, or smelling the fragrant lilies
of the Dutch Prince ; or perchance, on their apostacy,
denying their affinity with Popery, or being allied to the
O'Dorans, O'Morans, and, though last not least, the
O'Phelans, as, bless our stars ! we find one of the last
name so high in the Church, that he has frightened from
their former haunts one or two old vultures from the
once Popish steeple of Armagh. However, it must be
confessed, that the infatuated Mrs. Rumble robbed
her own relations of their birth-right to enrich a
boy of neither family or fortune. I respect the Wests
as worthy, industrious mechanics, but they were by
no means an equal alliance for the Lyster family. —
Perhaps the reader will say it was a love match, wherein
such little boys as young Master Grady might be in-
duced to throw away his satchel and take a trip to
Gretna Green to undergo the awful ceremony of the
connubial ties by a drunken blacksmith, which, in the
eyes of the public, might bring contumely and censure
on both parties. This was not the case with Mrs. Rum-
ble and her husband. Master West ; he was old enough
to know (for he was twenty-four) that the old woman of
seventy had a large fortune, which, by all the forms of
law, he took care to secure to himself: she, the weak-
minded old lady, was bending towards the verge of
the grave, in which her body was placed in a few years,
I believe months, after making the young shopman one
of the happiest men born. What husband could be blind
to the many perfections of such a fascinating model as
the esteemed Charles Phillips described the Widow
Wilkins, at the time that poor Peter Blake was expir-

55

ing, not for herself, but a certain stipend (£600 a year)
that the Government allowed her in lieu of her old Sur-
geon, in whose arms the gallant General Wolfe ceased
to breathe. Mr. West was more fortunate than Lieute-
nant Blake, though Mr. Blake had a higher claim to re-
spectability, being nearly allied to my Lord Bloomfield,
and others who grace the peerage. Mr. West had not
been long a Magistrate until he involved himself in law
with a riotous character of the name of Kinsella, well
known about Mount-Mary and Castlekelly. This noted
disturber was leading a lawless mob to meet another fe-
rocious faction — such as generally congregate to cause
a tumult in the fair of Athleague. Mr. West Lyster, as
a Magistrate, and I believe in right of his wife lord of
the manor, interfered to suppress the disturbance, and,
in a rash moment, fired a pistol shot, with a view, we
must suppose, to intimidate Kinsella, whom he wounded
severely in the cheek. I would be the first to panegy-
rise any Magistrate for exerting himself to put down
disturbances at public meetings ; but without reading
the Riot Act it is madness to fire at any individual
amidst hundreds of persons, all moving through and fro.
Some gentry, who were not so vehemently in love with
Master West as the infatuated Mrs. Rumble, backed, iC
is said, this Kinsella, which put Lyster West to some
expense before he got himself out of the scrape. How-
ever, this did not end his troubles nor the anxiety of
the old lady, who fell in for no small share of cen-
sure for her folly in her dotage. He seduced a Miss
Kelly, I believe the daughter of Mr. Kelly of Buckfield,
and, after the Counsel on both sides had abused each
other to gratify their clients, and analyzed some love let-
ters, which, for their immorality, should have been long
hence destroyed, the Roscommon Jurors awarded this
victim of adultery and seduction only five hundred
pounds. This ends my Memoirs of Mr, Rumble and

56

Master West Lyster. I wish to observe, however, that
I do not by any means censure Mr. West for marrymg
the old woman to enrich himself — the blame is solely
attached to her own unlamented memory.

Rookwood, the ancient seat of the Waller family, is
within one mile of the post-town of Athleague ; it is
delightfully situated on the banks of the Suck, and
commands a most diversified view of the romantic and
lofty Mount-Mary, whose magnitude, though of easy
access to its fertile summit, is adorned with verdant
fields, some scattered villages, and the beautiful villa of
Coll Dillon, Esq., which adds no small attraction to the
picturesque scenery in and about Rookwood. This has
recently been the residence of Christopher TaafFe, Esq.,
of Woodfield, in Mayo. His frail wife (Miss Honora
Burke, of Glinsk Castle, and maternally allied to the
Blakes of Ardfry,) thought the latter seat too remote
from good society, and prevailed on her indulgent and
fond consort to purchase Rookwood, from which she
eloped (though the mother of four children by Mr.
Taaffe) with Lord William FitzGerald, of the house of
Leinster. By her improper conduct she outraged the
law of heaven, by living in a state of adultery, for the
sake (as we must suppose) of a vain and empty title,
plunged a most amiable and highly respectable gentle-
man and his children into the greatest affliction, and
brought disgrace upon a large circle of the first families
in this kingdom. Mr. Taaffe got six thousand pounds
damages against the seducer — a poor pittance indeed
for so base a disgrace, and the odium it brought on a
family so highly connected. Every body in the habit of
reading the police reports must recollect the outrage and
battery of Mrs. Taaffe on her aunt, the Dowager Coun-
tess of Erroll, in which many of the Saints of St. Giles's
were concerned. She attacked Lady Erroll, says an
eye witness, to get possession of her daughter j on

which occasion, it being a family quarrel, a large fac-
tion of the most ferocious Connaughtonians in Drury-
lane and St. Giles's, congregated on the Hampstead
road ; however, after a severe contest on both sides, the
Scotch Countess, (though a gallant leader of the Ardfry
forces,) the Glinsk rustics, under the command of my
Lady TaafFe, gained the victory, and the poor infant
was carried in great triumph to the house of Lord Wil-
liam Fitzgerald, in Hereford-street, Park-lane.

Donamon, once the magnificent seat of the great
O'Fenaughty, which came into the possession of the
Burkes of Glinsk Castle by a marriage alliance, was
wrenched from the heirs of that family by the Usurper,
and given to the Kings of Boyle, from whom the Earls
of Kingston are descended. During the time that the
heirs of King retained these manors, they were badly
paid by their tenantry, as appeal's from some old re-
cords found amongst the papers of my maternal ances-
tors, the Skeffingtons of Kilbegnad Castle, in this neigh-
bourhood, from whom the Cromwellian agents took a
considerable scope of land also. The tenantry, says
this ill-coloured kid-skin, had no small aversion to the
old soldiers who ransacked the noble abbey of Boyle,
as well as Kilbegnad, and the only way that they could
obtain any token of their being lords of the fee-simple
was when they brought a reinforcement of their vassals
and sanguinary yeomen, who drove all the cattle they
<;ould find before them, and sold them for what they
would bring in the market of Boyle. The Burkes of
Glinsk Castle and the Kings were always in contention,
each harassing the persecuted peasantry in their turn.

Some time after, the heirs of Boyle sold their claim to
these manors to a Mr. Caulfieid, a kinsman of the Cbar-
lemont family, the father of Counsellor Caulfieid, from
whom the late Thomas, Theophilus, and Chief-Justice
Caulfieid, were descended. Thomas Caulfieid died un-

I

SB

manied ; but a woman of the name of Peggy Jordaily
who afterwards married one James Black, a brogue-
maker by trade, fathered a daughter on him ; I believe
her name was Jane, whom he had properly educated,

and I understand he left her £10,000. Sir R K ,

being in want of money, married her ; and, from what I
understand, she was a good wife, and humane to her dis-
tressed serfs and tenantry. She was the mother of the
late Lord Kingsborough, (who married Miss Fitzgerald,
the great heiress of Mitchclstown, in the county of
Cork) ; Colonel King of Ballina, Tyrav.lly ; the Dowager
Countess of Rosse ; and Lady Eleanor King, who died
at Wellington, in the county of Salop, a few years
back. The late Chief-Justice Caulfield died unmar-
ried, after having accumulated a large fortune by his
economy and profession, to the latter of which he
was a distinguished ornament. The last time he pre-
sided as Judge on the Munster Circuit he left the unfor-
tunate Sir Laurence Cotter, Bart, of Rockforest, near
Donerail, for execution, for a rape on a Quaker's daugh-
ter. On this occasion, he observed, (seeing that Cotter
was so universally regretted,) that he never would come
that circuit again. He was a man at all times much
afraid of thieves and robbers, though never assailed in
his life by any of those formidable bandit that in those
days infested this country, denominated Tories, at the head
of which was a notorious character of the name of Bryan
Kelly, commonly called in the Irish language, Breen
Robugh O'Kallagh. However, one incident deserves to
be recorded ; a servant of the name of Fiynn, who lived
many years as footman with his Lordship, but with whom
the latter parted for frequent intoxication, and Avhose
parents were tenants on the Donamon estate, having
a perfect knowledge of the castle and where the Judge
kept his hoard, this worthless villain availed himself of
making an attack on his late master on a night when

59

the household were invited to a ball given by Mr.
Croughan of Ardmore-house, (which was only separated
from the Caulfield mansion by the great river Suck) to
his own domestics and their friends. Tlie robber found
the under doors all open, and walked up to the Chief
Justice's study with his face blackened ; he presented a
pistol at his Lordship, and demanded his money. Five
hundred guineas lay carelessly on a round table, a short
distance from where Judge Caulfield sat, which he had
received only a few hours previously from his agent,
Mr. Tighe. Take that five hundred guineas, said he,
and be gone : No, nor double the sum, replied the rob-
ber. Then stop, friend, said his Lordship, until I get
some in the next room, to which he immediately re-
tired, and locked the door as he got in. Here he threw
up the window, and sounded a speaking-trumpet, calling
on his servants to come to his assistance, for that he
was attacked by robbers. This alarmed the family and
domestics at Ardmore (a very handsome mansion, de-
molished through the folly of the late St. George Caul-
field). The villain Flynn remained in the study all the
time, thinking the old Judge would return according
to promise ; but was not a little surprised when he found
himself surrounded by such as heard the trumpet echo-
ing through the charming glens and verdant banks in
and about the house of Donamon. The first who en-
tered was his Lordship's butler, who shot the unfortu-
nate Flynn through the heart, and the body was
thrown out of the window, where it remained until a
Coroner's inquest was held on it. It was ordered to be
buried in the cross roads, and the five hundred guineas,
with which he might have walked off without further
notice, were divided amongst the servants, every one re-
ceiving his share according to his station in his Lordship's
establishment. Judge Caulfield was a most eccentric,
and indeed a singular character in many respects, such

60

as we find old bachelors and old maids in general, whose
Avhims and caprices render those whose avocations in
this vale of woe are connected with them often disagree-
able. His Lordship's favourite mistress (for it seems he
was a noted gallant in his youthful days) was one Miss

, who left his Lordship, not (as he asserted

himself some time after the young wench's frail incon-
stancy) with an empty hand : she took a large sum of
gold, says he, out of my closet. This woman got mar-
ried to a surveyor, a most respectable man, in the neigh-
bourhood of Ballymoe, and undoubtedly was a good
wife, and a humane woman in her sphere of society after-
wards. His Lordship spent the winter months at his
house in Aungier-street, in the City of Dublin, and the
summer at his noble seat Donamon, about four miles
from the town of Roscommon, and seventy-tAvo from
Dublin. He was partial to the foreign breed of cattle,
and paid a high price for some Dutch and Hereford
calves ; one day he put on his mud boots to walk through
the pasture on which his kine were regaling themselves,
accompanied by his steward, Mr. Richard Giblin, a
worthy man, who from his childhood had lived on the
demesne of Donaman : on this occasion he began to ad-
mire a beautiful young cow, of the Dutch breed, with a
wild calf racing and enjoying the sultry rays of the sun,
and shining from the profusions of good new milk that
voraciously went down his merry throttle. It happened,
at the moment, that a poor old man, called Michael
Fadda, or Long Michael, who had been an old and intimate
acquaintance of the Chief Justice, as, in their youthful
days, they often played pitch-and-toss, foot-ball, and
marbles together, met them. Michael, said his Lordship,
Dick tells me (alluding to his steward) that you have no
milk in this warm weather : it is true, my Lord, replied
Long Michael. But suppose, saysthe Judge, that I made
you, as a token of our early friendship, a compliment of

61

one of those cows, which would you select as your
choice? Arrah, avourneen, please your honour, my
good Lord Chief Justice, says Michael, it would be
a foolish thing of me to pass that auburn crumeen, point-
ing out an old cow, for many years on the list of barren-
ness from old age, Avhich, as a compensation for the
period she had supplied the inhabitants of the castle
with curds and sweet whey, was allowed to range at
large, tasting the fragrant and wholesome daisies and
verdant shamrocks for which the diversified and charm-
ing fields of Donamon are so justly celebrated. Hearing
Michael panegyrize the old cow, which he lauded to the
sky, the Judge at once conjectured that he was smitten
with old crumeen, whose wrinkled forehead and reclin-
ing horns convinced those that took a view x>f her drop-
sical circumference that she was bending fast towards
her last home. Well, Michael, said his Lordship, take
your choice of the cows. Long Michael shook his
shoulders two or three times, squeezing his lips together
and throwing up his prodigious eyebrows, he said, I thank
your Lordship most kindly. After a long pause the
Chief Justice asked him if he had determined which to
take. Yes, my Lord, replied Long Michael, I know
poor Crumeen was at one time, when you and I were
young men, one of the best milch cows in this parish ;
she is now superannuated, and much on the decline, con-
sequently, as your Lordship is so good as to take my
forlorn and abject state into your kind consideration,
feeling as you do for the distress of me and my family,
Heaven bless and reward you, I will, with your leave,
take as my choice that handsome cow with the young
calf, meaning the Dutch cow with which his Lordship
was so much delighted a few minutes before. The con-
sequence was, that Judge Caulfield gave him twenty
guineas, and another milch cow, to leave him his favourite
Dutch breed, Whenever his Lordship was discharging

62

any of his servants for misconduct, which was chiefly con-
fined to drunkenness, a crime that he never would for-
give, he ordered his under coachman to get his carriage
ready, and give the person leaving his establishment,
whether male or female, a jaunt to the cross roads near
the town of Roscommon, with orders to tell the dis-
carded to make a choice of the road. His favourite
amusement, even in his old age, was playing pitch-and-
toss, at which game he was always very expert ,• and
when he won all the halfpence that the naked rustics
were possessed of, he retired to the top of a large syca-
more tree which reclined most enchantingly over the
road, a short distance from the Castle, in which was a
handsome seat for him to sit, and the branches were
interwoven so judiciously that they kept off the rain. To
this fragrant sofa he could ascend w ith all the ease ima-
ginable, by a safe ballustrade, and a stair-case cut neatly
in the same tree, which is still growing more verdant
and more flourishing than ever. From his lofty seat,
not on the Bench of Justice, but on that sweet-scented
bench on which his Lordship spent the happiest mo-
ments of his life, he had a delightful view of the demesne
and Castle of which he was the lord and owner, and
also the various groups of wild foAvl that took refuge on
the handsome islands in the noble Suck, which forms
into a lake in the vicinity of the Castle. On the death
of Judge Caulfield, the property fell into the possession
of his only sister, Mrs. Walcott, who lived many years
in York-street, and at her rural cottage at Newtown
Park, in the County of Dublin. The heir apparent was
the late St. George Caulfield, the only son of Thcophilus
Caulfield, by Miss Irwin of Castle-Irwin, in the County
of Fermanagh. He married Miss Harriet Crofton of
Moate Park, in this county. His only sister was Mrs.
Cuffe of Deel Castle, in the County of Mayo. By every
account Colonel Cuffe imquestionably deserved a good

63

wife and a splendid fortune, such as the highly acconi'
plished Miss Caulfield of Donamon Castle, with other
graces, brought to the ancient residence of the Gore
family, now in the possession of the heirs of Viscount
Tyrawley. From circumstances very well known, it is
obvious that if the rich daughter of the beautiful Dona-
mon were aware at the time of her union with Mr. Cuffe,
commonly called the Honourable Colonel CufFe, (he was
only the illegitimate son of the Peer of Tyrawley,) great
as his expectations might have been, and exalted his
rank in the British army, that union would never have
taken place. Colonel CufFe, who died a few months
ago, has left no issue by Miss Caulfield.

Kilbegnad Castle, at one time a noble residence, is
levelled to the ground, and there is not so much as one
stone to be seen ; all that remains of its former great-
ness is the old burial ground attached to the abbey. —
This Castle stood about two miles from the house of Do-
namon. These fertile manors were for upwards of one
thousand years the inheritance of my maternal ances-
tors ; and I have to solicit the great indulgence of my
readers on a subject that must bring melancholy reflec-
tions to my thoughts. One thing I wish to observe is,
that I hope they will not accuse of me of vain and
assumed egotism, as I was nurtured in poverty, and
uneducated, save that which the children of indigence
receive from the village pedagogue, where often unfor-
tunately their susceptibility forms worse impressions
than any favourable idea of removing the original errors.
Of my father's family I said a few words by way of an
introduction, when I commenced this volume of " My
Early Recollections" but which, I fear from incapacity,
will rather incense the public mind against me than give
general satisfaction. All I crave, however, from the
public reviewers and periodical critics, with which this
country is inundated, is to spare the life of this forlorn.

64

friendless, and unorthographical pamphlet, and not
cause its abortion, or falling under the sabre of the
numerous group of sack-'em-ups that have overspread
the country, by throwing it still-born, even without the
benefit of the clergy, into a premature grave. The
Skeffington family, from whom I am descended, are of
French extraction. They got possession of the Kilbeg-
nad and Crosswell estates, in the County of Gal way, in
the eighth century, and retained their patrimony in
rotation, each lineal heir in succession, as the inheritors
of their progenitors, till the days of that scourge of
hell, Oliver Cromwell, at which period the heirs of that
noble family lost the moiety given to the Kingston
family, but now in the possession of that amiable young
minor, St. George Caulfield, as yet very little known in
this country, he having been chiefly educated on the
Continent and in England ; so that I may throw him in
amongst that ungrateful batch of absentees who never
spend a shilling of the great and exorbitant revenues
wrenched from the resources of this forsaken country.
In the metropolis, or amongst the naked and neglected
peasantry, in recording a genuine description of the
country M'hich I am attempting to pourtray, candour
obliges me to mention these circumstances, in order to
make its localities more universally known in Great
Britain, as well as in my native soil; yet let not the
reader imagine that I assail young Mr. Caulfield in the
language of acrimony for absenting himself from his
native country — thousands, possessing larger fortunes
and of more mature years, have done the same — and
particularly as Minor Caulfield is yet under the control
of his mother, a woman who, in her most splendid and
princely days, was not very partial to the antique man-
sion that adorns the beautiful and extensive demesne in
and about the principality of the great O'Fenaughty.
The Skeffington family, in their prosperous days, were

65

possessed of extensive domains in and about Kilbegnad
Castle — sucli as Crosswells, Curraghreagh, Rossmiian,
some lands farmed by a Mr. Tighe, and the lands sold
recently by Lady Elizabeth Russell, which her Ladyship
held in right of her mother, the daughter of Peter Daly,
Esq., commonly called Peter the Fool. Those manors
got into the possession of the heirs of Glinsk Castle
after the Revolution of 1688. The memorable procla-
mation issued by the Commissioners of the Prince of
Orange from Limerick, according to the promises and
articles of capitulation between those mighty sages and
Lord Sarsfield, Viscount Mayo, the Earl of Enniskillen,
Generals Darrington, Preston and others, on behalf of
the Irish, the gentry of the empire, or at least such as
the rapine and epidemic contagion that raged, or the
sanguinary sword of the ferocious and merciless bri-
gands that over-run and ransacked the coimtry, were
summoned to get charity, that is a moiety or some
moor on the outskirt of their former patrimony. In
this state the pusillanimous Stuarts, whose very name
should be held up to posterity with that execration that
their immoral and irreligious lives and examples de-
serve, plunged the inhabitants of this persecuted coun
try in almost every reign during the period that the
great Lord of Heaven and Earth allowed such impiety
as they introduced by their sanction and bad example to
exist, and which never could be annihilated but by their
final overthrow ; and, with all my heart, I say, in the
old and well-known phrase, " Joy be with them." It is
obvious that the indignation of God weighed heavily
over the Scotch race of the Stuarts, wherein he raised
rebellion, schism, public execution on the block, and a
scourge of the most sanguinary revolution that ever
disgraced and disturbed the ancient inheritors of a
country. God often raises a revolt in one country to
scourge another ; but has he not raised a daughter and

K

m

a' nephew to scourge, not James the Second, but James
the last ? What other end could the descendants of the
murderers of David Rizzio, and the many high crimes
of the surplus of lust and the seed of adultery (Darnley)
expect but anarchy and tribulation, or the paramour of
the notorious Nell Gwynne, in the face of the world,
and I may say in the presence of his own Queen, who
lived in a notorious state of adultery with a wicked and
lascivious woman, and had the audacity to raise his bas-
tards to Peerages, with escutcheons far above the
ancient and legitimate nobles of the empire. To return,
however, to the mock, and in many instances, fraudulent
settlement of the people's rights in 1689. In the strong
garrison of Limerick, my great-grandfather's age and
infirmities prevented him to attend, and particularly as
the Baronet of Glinsk Castle, with whom he was con-
nected by marriage, promised to ansAver in his name at
the Court of Claims, and obtain for him a renewal of
those parts that the agents of Oliver Cromwell thought
proper to allow the heirs of that house to retain. When
Skeffington of Skeffington Abbey, commonly called Kil-
begnad, was called for. Sir John Burke of Glinsk Castle
answered, and by an adjustment not noAV Avorth explain-
ing, he had, it appears, those manors registered in his
own name, part of which his heirs sold some years back
to Mr. Daly. It happened that it was an imposition on
the Commissioners, as well as on the old and esteemed
gentleman, who, between party and party, was deprived
of his hereditary birth-right. Mr. Skeffington died in a
few months after, leaving a distressed family by three
wives. His first wife was Catherine, the eldest sister of
Bobert Ulick Lane, Earl of Lanesborough ; his second
was Eleanor Honora, the daughter of Henry Mapother,
of Kiltevan, near Roscommon ; his last wife, who sur-
vived him, was the fourth daughter of William John
Kelly of Turroch, in the Barony of Athlone. By his

67

first wife he had two daughters, and one son who was
killed in the army ; by his second, Miss Mapother, from
whom I am descended, he had two sons ; and three
daughters by Miss Kelly of Turroch ; the eldest of them
was married to Henry Burke of Carrantrila, near Tuam,
but died in the confinement of her first-born, which
was a son, who became an officer in the Austrian ser-
vice, and who made a noble connexion in that country.
In this manner Avas the noble family of Skefiington
brought to an abject state j and those who enriched
themselves at their expense have not so much as one
cubit of those extensive manors in the possession of
their progeny at the present day, but have got (through
their prodigality) into other hands. The eldest of the
Miss Skeffingtons was married to Coll O'Flynn, Esq., of
Ballyglass, near the Abbey of Kilcrone, in this neigh-
bourhood ; the second married Mr. Burke of Gortmor-
ris, near Crosswells, a junior branch of the house of
Glinsk, who had for centuries tliis handsome patrimony,
for which, said my father, when affinity began to remove
by degrees the kindred of these families, the voracious
Baronets, maternally descended from Matilda O'Kelly
with the Long Dagger, thirsted most shamefully. The
last of these Burkes of Gortmorris was found dead in
his bed, apparently from strangulation. After the unfor-
tunate man's death, hump-back Richard (though not so
iM)torious for his sanguinary atrocities as that monster
personated so ably by Mr. Kean) came in for the pro-
perty of Gortmorris; and the whole of those estates,
obtained in the bloody days of Matilda O'Kelly, the
wife of Rick Burke, were sold a few months back to
pay the debts of that Baronet, commonly called Sir
John CufFe Burke, who can be heard of about Calais, or
in any of those celebrated hotels about St. James's. —
Another of the beautiful and accomplished daughters of
Henry John Skefiington, Esq., married O'Ferrall of

Ardandrew, in the County of Longford, whose ancient
territory was divided between the Edgeworths of Lissard,
now of Edgeworthstown, and the Fetherstons, which
family obtained a Baronetcy some years back, and got a
seat in the British House of Commons by the mira-
culous touch of my Lady Rosse's political mantle. —
The SkefRngtons of SkefRngton Abbey, or Kilbegnad,
were connected with some of the first families in the
United Kingdom, such as the O'Connors of Faly, or
Mount-Pleasant — the O'Moores of Cloughan and Moore
Abbey — the FitzGeralds of the Glens — the O'Kellys of
Aughrim and Turrock — the O'Haras of Sligo — the Mac
Donnells of Dunluce — the O'Neils and the Clotworthys
of the County of Antrim — and the Duchess of Massa-
reene, in France. A few miles from Kilbegnad Castle
is the noble ruin of the Abbey of Oran, on the Malone
estates, in the County of Roscommon. This magni-
ficent pile was destroyed in the memorable days of Oli-
ver Cromwell, and all the unfoitunate inmates put to
the sword. How the chxu'ch lands of this fertile and
very extensive district came into the possession of the
noble heirs of the house of Sunderlin, I cannot inform
the reader J but should any person be inclined to take
that trouble, from Mr. Maloue's great urbanity and
courtesy, I am confident they will get every satisfaction,
and the best fare in that well-known hospitable mansion^
called Palace, in the King's County. The spring burst-
ing from the foundation of this great havoc deserves
particular notice, from its being situated on a steep hill.
A short distance from this abbey, are the ruinous walls
within which the celebrated navigator, Irwin, was born,
to whose great talents and skill in navigation the
world is much indebted. The Irwins of Oran, or,
as it is commonly called, Killinerty, took refuge in
Ireland, during that virulent rebellion which raged in
Scotland in tlie latter days of the unfortunate Charles,

69

whom his own relatives and vassals sold for four- pence ;
au act that has disgraced them more than any other
crime, and for which the history of their country justly
accuses them. Was it any wonder, then, that the base
hero of Glencoe, who had numbers of the unfortunate
M'Donalds barbarously murdered in their beds, and
their blood sprinkled on the verdant glens of their an-
cestors, should find agents in the Highlands to put his
merciless and abominable atrocities into execution, and
his desired and well-bribed injunctions carried on to his
diabolical wishes ? The Irwins left their native country
under no auspicious or opulent circumstances, but
their good and honest intentions in the cause of justice
and humanity, came before them ; and in no country in
the known world is patriotic integrity more zealously
cherished than in Ireland, with all her Burkes and sack-
*em-ups. Sir John Davies said, " we (the Irish) loved
justice, but seldom got it :" But his Grace of Welling-
ton, and the immortal Robert Peel having taken the
beam of justice in their own hands, and following the
good and judicious advice of the honest and esteemed
O'Connell, have immortalized their names. The Ir-
wins of Oran lived many years in great respectability in
the vicinity of Roscommon j however, the prodigality
of the late gentry of that house caused the property to
vanish like their own memory, being almost extinct —
the only one of the navigator's family now in existence
being an old lady of eighty-four, who was left without
any means whatever in her infant days, save such as the
Almighty God has given his creatures — the use of her
faculties, and the exertions of her own frame. However
God raised a friend for the destitute Miss Irwin, in that
of a kinsman, the late William Irwin of Leighbeg, near
Ballymoe, in whose house she took refuge, until she got
married to one Robert Irwin, an invalid, with a short
leg, who served his apprenticeship to the silk weaving

70

business, in Meath-alley, in the Liberties of Dublin,
On the death of his father, who held a large farm, called
Emla, in this neighbourhood (I believe from the Earls
of Mountrath), Robert, who was the elder son by a for-
mer wife, claimed right to the farm, to the prejudice of
those whom the father and the step-mother intended to
be their successors. Robert, disabled as he was, threw
away his looms, tools, and shuttles, and bid a final adieu
to the fulsome lanes and smoke of the ragged Liberty,
and became a grazier : A happy circumstance for the
serfs and rustic farmers of the mountainous districts of
the barony of Costello, Ballyhaunus, and the mountains
of O'Flynn, as Mr. Irwin bought indiscriminately, from
five to twenty-five years old, all the cows with which
Viscount Dillon's lonely and insolvent tenantry were in-
cumbered for many years, and which poor old skeletons
had not, in the whole course of their miserable lives, tasted
so much as the top of one shamrock or daisie, but who
now were allowed to range at large through the fertile
fields of Castleplunkett. Robert Irwin, though a bad
judge of horned cattle, made some money by his farming,
which he gathered with all the rigid economy of a
miser; there he was hid from the world, in a long
thatched hovel, ornamented at the top with three dark
old chimnies, the centre one as v/idc and round appa-
rently, as that mighty pillar (declining by superannua-
tion, not by the fanaticism of the times,) that threatens
the destruction of the rag-sellers and herb-merchants of
John's-lane, well knoAvn as the bulky steeple of Christ's
Church. The only ornament that one could see was a
long loose stone-wall, and a few ash trees, some distance
from the family mansion, beaten doAvn by the storm and
the nests of a few rooks which built there in the spring
of the year : the black marsli, in a deep swajnp called
the Glen, not the Glen of the Downs, but the valley of
typhus contagion, and the other miseries so common

7i

attiottg the rustics of that country— the mud of which is
tiie only source from which the serfs and neighbouring
herds derive their winter firing, which they make into
mortar, formed into bricks, and bake them for some
weeks before the sun : — these were the rural scenes
that adorned the family mansion prepared for the recep-
tion of the grand-daughter of the great and celebrated
navigator Irwin, whom the silk-weaver married at the
house of Leighbeg, on the banks of the River Suck.
Robert Irwin had two sons and one daughter by Miss
Bridget Irwin of Killinerty ; the daughter, at the age of
sixteen, eloped with the late Paid Davis, Esq. of Cloon-
shanville, near Frenchpark ; the elder son, John Irwin,
made a Gretna Green marriage Avith the daughter of
a neighbouring grazier of the name of Balfe — he was
underage at the time; the younger son (Christopher),
who was intended for the Church, married the gaoler's
daughter in the town of Galway, I think in the year
I8I7. There never were recorded three children who
disobeyed the injunctions of their parents with more
audacious or flagitious impropriety than the unfortu-
nate progeny of Bob Irwin. The daughter eloped
with an old and embarrassed rake, though of a good
family ; the elder son obtained money on inadequate
mortgages and under false pretences, and finally he be-
came a thief and a robber ; he forged on the Bank of
Ireland to a large amount, and robbed one Feely, an
opulent grazier of this county, of ten thousand pounds :
another indictment charged him with aiding and assist-
ing in the barbarous murder of an unfortunate rustic of
the name of Flynn, near Ballymoe in the County of Gal-
way, the father of six helpless children. The transac-
tions relating to this murder deserve being recorded : —
The younger of these Irwins took the cottage and de-
mesne of Marnell's Grove from an attorney of the name
of Marnell, who lives in Duke-street, Westminster, in

n

the City of London, and appointed Thomas Nolan, of
Milford, his agent. Mr. Irwin, after retaining posses-
sion of the lands and premises, for, I believe, about
eighteen months, refused to pay the rent agreed for, ran-
sacked the house of all that was portable, such as grates,
frames, fixtures, &c. and removed the chief part of the
stock off the land, save a few young colts and bullock
calves : the remnant that remained was impounded by
the agent, and left in the care of the unfortunate Flynn,
who lived in a wretched hut partly built in the pound-
wall, so that nothing could be removed therefrom with-
out his knowledge. The night after the cattle were
given into his charge, a gang of lawless murderers sur-
rounded the poor man's cabin, broke open the pound,
and drove the cattle to a distant farm belonging to these
Irwins, or the faction who espoused their cause. Flynn
on hearing the noise came out, when he was assailed
witli a volley of stones from the party, by which he wa3
soon brought to the ground. His wretched wife, with
a new born infant in her arms, left a sick bed to render
assistance to her husband, and received similar treat-
ment. One of the party, more ferocious than the rest,
stepped forward and fired a blunderbuss into Flynn's
face; not satisfied with this, the monster turned the
blunderbuss in his hand and gave the unfortunate vic-
tim a blow on the head which divided the skull : they
then trampled on his body and departed with their booty,
leaving a disconsolate widow and six naked orphans la-
bouring under all the privations and wretchedness at
which nature recoils with horror — a mother frantic from
despair, and from the multiplicity of vicissitudes with
which she is surrounded, careless of her fate from the
tragic massacre she had just witnessed, and trampling,
in her bare feet, in the blood of her murdered husband,
the soother of her sorrows, the partner of her early and
unpolluted lovf?, who consoled her in her pains and ad ■

73

fiainistef ied to her parched lips the leaking platter of cold
water which the bounty of a neighbouring spring pro-
fusely supplied in spite of the oppression of the tyrant,
the exactions of the middleman, or the overcharge of the
merciless tithe proctor. Are we to suppose for a mo-
ment that the throne of the living God was to be insulted
and outraged with impunity ? Is it not obvious that the
Lord of the Universe, who witnessed such heinous and
wanton barbarity, would avenge the wrongs of the or-
phan and the piercing moans of the starving widow ? —
Was it any wonder that the curse of an angry and in-
sulted God would fall heavily on the instigators and per-
petrators of so detestable a crime ? Why, to my own
knowledge the chief of the accused — (as yet none of his
abettors have suffered under the offended laws of their
country) — is homeless and pennyless, pining away in
want, and abhorred with that execration and disgust
his many atrocities deserve, and upon which, unques-
tionably, is entailed the indignation of the living God !
Is it to be supposed that the most vulgar rustic, much
less those whose knowledge of the world should tell
them that they ought to value that great treasure, an
unblemished character, would deign to notice or be seen
in company with murderers, forgers, common impos-
tors, and indeed, only that he did not stand on the high-
way, the most notorious robber tliat ever was known in
the County of Roscommon — that villain who evaded the
just sentence of the law by breaking out of prison, and
for whose apprehension one thousand pounds were of-
fered, strange to say, escaped, though he lay three days
under a broken leg — (" what a pity," says the Widow
Feely, " it was not his Orange neck") — in a fulsome cel-
lar in Dirty-lane, and spent upwards of a month at a
Mr, Howly's, near Ballina in the County of Mayo, pre-
vious to his sailing from the neighbourhood of Sligo for

74

America. " John Irwin/' says the late Jack Farrell of
Bloomfield, " was, without exception, the most polished
rogue that ever the annals of this country placed
amongst the felons in a Newgate Calendar.'" Major
Wills, for some years a stipendiary Magistrate in this
County, apprehended Irwin at a lofty mansion, recently
modernised, on the hill of the celebrated Emla, which
Dean Swift describes as one of those castles in the air. —
He paid Major Wills great attention by ordering a break-
fast for him and his body guard : while the party were
regaling themselves, honest Johnny asked the Major's
leave to go into the next room to speak to his wife, the
daughter of the late Mr. Balfe, of Heathfield, on the
Dillon Manors in that neighbourhood. The Major, so
courteous and full of urbanity, granted the interview,
but the knowing yo.r tricked him by getting out of the
window. Christopher Irwin, who remained for three
years in Galway gaol, could not be identified by Flynn's
wife, consequently he was acquitted. He afterwards
married the gaoler's daughter, known at one time as the
Irwins of Emla.

Dundermott, previous to the last Revolution, was the
residence of MacDermott Roe. The MacDermott Roes
possessed large estates in the vicinity of Oran Abbey
and Ballymoe, on the banks of the River Suck j they are
a junior branch of the noble house of Coolavin, and in
every age since their recognition as the leading aristo-
cracy of that district, made connexions worthy of them-
selves. Counsellor MacDermott, who married Miss
Kelly, the heiress of Springfield, is the lineal descendant
from that ancient family. The late Colonel CufFe of Bal-
lymoe, Avho got the chief part of these manors, died some
years back without male issue, leaving his estates to both
his daughters as co-heiresses. The eldest became a Ca-
tholic, and married Sir John Burke, Bart, of Glinsk
Castle J the second married a Captain Baggot, whose

75

son inherits tlie property, and is a Magistrate of the
County of Galway. Dundermott has been the residence
of Samuel Lee, Esq.. for many years. He was the son of
a carpenter of that name, who was employed by Judge
Caulfield about the Castle of Donamon. His brother-
in-law, an attorney of the name of Owens, who lived a
single life though not a chaste one, accumulated some
property ; amongst the rest, the house and lands of
Dundermott, which he mortgaged from Colonel Cuffe. —
The late Samuel Lee called himself Samuel Lee Owens,
on getting the property. His first wife was Miss Wills
of Willsg-rove, in this neighbourhood; and his second
was a Miss Fetherstone, the sister of an opulent grazier
of that name, in the vicinity of Mullingar. Mr. Owens
had children by both wives ; he was very fond of his
daughters, and gave them competent fortunes, while his
two sons were not much better than roving paupers ;
both went into the navy as common sailors, and one of
them died a few months back at the house of a publican
of the name of Richard Ryan, at the corner of a filthy
lane near the end of Holies-street, Merrion-square, in the
City of Dublin. He had the pretty face of the Owens,
was a great smoker, and prodigiously fond of grog.
Mr. Owens' two sisters succeeded each other as the fond
wives of the late Counsellor Whitestonc, at one time a
Barrister for the County of Roscommon. Mr. Owens'
eldest daughter married a Mr. Birch, son to a banker of
that name, who failed for no small sum, some years
back, in Sackville-street, in the City of Dublin. The
second daughter married Captain Conry of Cloonnahee,
near Elphin ; the third married a Counsellor Blakeny
of Athleague; and the fourth (Mr, Owens' great favou-
rite) Mr. Kelly of Churchborough, near Athlone. The
sons, it seems, were not exquisitely particular in their
selection ; consequently " Collins' Peerage" omitted
entertaining its perusers with the genealogy of the

'6

ladies whom they led to the hymeneal mart of raatri-;
mony. Mr. Owens, though not claiming high lineage,
was much esteemed, and lived in the most gentlemanly
style of any Squire or Magistrate in his neighbourhood,
keeping (till within a few years of his death) a hand-
some equipage and a respectable establishment. He
retired from society to a nice lodge on his own beautiful
demesne, where he died, deservedly lamented, at an
advanced age, I believe, in 1814. He is interred in the
old Popish Abbey of Kilcrone, without so much as a
common cenotaph to record his worth and unbounded
benevolence.

A few miles from Dundermott is Newtown, the estate
of Mr. Costello, (who married the highly accomplished
Miss Lambert of Milford, the maternal grand-daughter
of the late and justly-esteemed Sir John Burke, Bart.)
the late occupier of a long thatched low hovel, with two
rutty gable-ends, the vacant funnel of which was occu-
pied by a pair of the most daring ravens and a clamour-
ing colony of chattering daws, called Newtown-house,
in which was a notorious character of the name of
William Burke, commonly called (in consequence of hig
carrying a long sword suspended from a leather girdle)
in the Irish language, Luama Clavagh, or William
Scimitar. This Burke was a remote relative of the
Burkes of Gortmorris, a junior branch of the Glinsk
family. He farmed a few acres about Newtown-house,
(of which I have given an abridged account,) without
any friend or even common acquaintance having the
least intercourse with him for upwards of fifty years,
save some women, who, even at the peril of their lives,
visited him, when driven by the clergy from their native
home, being immoral and abandoned characters, the
consequence of which was that this ferocious and aus-
tere tyrant overstocked the neighbourhood with bas-
tards J even his landlord was gtCtually afraid to send to

11

him for his rent till he thought proper to send it. H-b
whole delight was in rearing every creeping thing that
moved on the earth, save his own illegitimates, whom
he could never bear to see or hear of. He was con-
sidered to have the best breed of pigs in the Barony of
Ballymoe, which he reared with the fond care of a
parent. One end of NewtoM'n-house was allotted for an
old sow (a legacy his mother left him) and her nume-
rous brood, who, when one would suppose she was on
the hst of superannuation, (being nearly twenty years of
age,) was as flexible and fruitful as when in the prime
of life, and brought no small annual revenue to her
master — in consequence of which he considered her his
stock in trade. So sensible was this animal of her mas-
ter's propensities, and so accustomed to his eccentricity,
that the moment she heard his curses and turbulent
clamour, she w^ent and hid in a remote corner, and
never so much as grunted during the time that he was
in those boisterous freaks. In this large hovel he lived
for many years, and had no other society but his horses,
cows and pigs, with the exception of the women he
kept during pleasure, or to do his manual labour in thie
spring of the year. The horned cattle he generally kept
tied to large stakes, pegged into the wall, by long rope^.
During the winter nights, when coming short of fodder,
the poor things pulled their horns from these side
wedges, and roved about with pointed bayonets for raw
potatoes, the straw from under Lady Burke's pillow, or
some old blanket or cloth for change of diet. When
their voracious maw led them to press too hard upon
the chieftain's palliasses, he jumped up in a furious rage,
and got hold of a large iron tongues. This teri'ified the
poor animals to such a degree, that they ran through
and fro for refuge, as former lessons on these occasions
made them sensible of the cruelty of their unrelenting
and ferocious owner. When he was determined to kill

78

one of his pet swine for his own use, he generall seduced
It with hot potatoes, and while the poor thing- was par-
taking of its last supper, William Scimitar was watch-
ing an opportunity to give it a blow of a weighty sledge
on the forehead. While the wretched beast was grasp-
ing for death, one of the Lady Burke s was hurrying it
with greater ease to the other world, by cutting its
throat comfortably ; and another of the frail ribs, with
equal humanity, to accelerate its pains and penalties,
had a wad of straw in a blaze about its carcase to burn
the hair off. When he wished to kill any of his geese,
of which species he generally had a large flock, he ran
among them with a long wattle, and killed old and
young indiscriminately, and having no carving knife but
his own rusty scimitar, which, from hewing wood and
other purposes, was rather blunt, the goose, for the
sake of accommodation, was drawn limb from limb by
the hands or mouth. Any fair or market that the fero-
cious barbarian went to, the principal part of the mul-
titude made off with their lives. He generally rode a
tall iron-grey horse, which he named " Charger,"
mounted in that style that you recognise in those terrific
effigies modelled after that Titular Saint, Oliver Crom-
well — a man so noted for his sanguinary ferocity,
habituated to rapine and riot, and dressed in such a garb
of terror, and mounted on one of the most vicious and
ungovernable garrans that ever served its apprenticeship
in the old Enniskilleners of 1688, which reared front-
wards and kicked spitefully backwards, with cropped
ears, long tail, open mouth, and a prodigious large head.
Was it any wonder that such a master and so terrific
and warlike a charger would cause no small terror in
the minds of the populace in those days, where the
inhabitants had not the protection of the law as in
the present ? I have seen the wild man of the wood,
said my father, at the fair of that factious and lawless

79

colony, well known as Castle-Plunkett, a village which
produced in every age the most ferocious and dauntless
prize-fighters, and from which (in our own times) the
notorious John Irwin of Emla selected the reprobate
gang of murderers who displayed their barbarous fero-
city in annihilating the unfortunate pound-keeper of
Kilcrone. Here, added my father, William Scimitar
Burke mounted a charger, which sometimes stood erect
on his hind legs, and made a formidable charge at the
populace ; and when he found that he could assail them
with his hind legs in nooks and corners, kicked, reared,
and plunged with the adroitness and chivalry of a
trooper. What brought him to those public meetings
nobody could tell, as he seldom had any thing to dispose
of, and (with the exception of strangers) no person
would purchase goods from him. The only reason that
can be assigned for his getting into such tantrims at
Castle-Plunkett was a foolish boy who laughed at the
length of his spurs, his uncouth exterior, and the mus-
cular ferocity of his mustacheos. Though brought up in
that rude rustic and indolent life, and having in his
youthful days outlawed all controul, it seems he read
some good works, and displayed no small share of eru-
dition in his satirical attack on the late Thomas Connor
of Milltown, on his apostacy to get to be High Sheriff
and a Magistrate of the County of Roscommon. In one
of his verses he says —

There comes a Jiist ass of Peace,
With his tearing: Corrmission, O.

On Tom's marriage with Miss O'Flynn of Turla, who
had a prodigious leer in her best eye, and was far ad-
vanced on the list of old maids at the time, he ad-
dresses him thus —

Hie, hie, for Tom Connor of Miltown,
And hie for his crooked-ey'd Lady.

The tragic end of this village tyrant was awful ! He

80

isent a kish of young pigs to the Candlemas fair of Bally-
moe, to be sold by one of those ladies of easy virtue,
who, in her turn, acted as caterer and sales-woman.
In the course of the day he rode into the fair himself,
and, on alighting off his horse, one of the neighbouring
rustics was leading a fat hog through the crowd; the
rope attached to its leg chanced to entangle in William
Scimitar's long spur, which enraged him to that degree
that he drew his sword ; the young man let the pig go,
and made off with his life; he ran into an ale-house just
opposite, and took refuge in a room off the kitchen, in
which the keeper of the house frequently kept a horse,
and in which stood a large pitchfork; by the uproar
amongst the crowd, he felt convinced that William
Burke was at his heels ; he then shut the door against
Scimitar. However, the reprobate man's passion was
raised to such a pitch, that he was determined to gratify
his revenge; he was breaking in the door; the young
man inside had no other resource but to fight for his
life ; taking hold of the fork, he drove it with his full
force through William Scimitar Burke's body, who fell
instantly to rise no more. Thus, to the no small joy of
the neighbouring population, terminated the life of one
of the most ferocious and turbulent monsters (save the
notorious Robert Ormsby of Tubbervaddy) that ever dis-
graced this province by their barbarous and manifold
atrocities. His mortal and unregretted remains were
carried home in the same creel in which he sent his pigs
to market. The Ladies Burke of Newtown had him
laid out in state for a whole week, in that excellent style
that the great artist, Cruikshank, describes an Irish
wake, with all the ludicrous scenes connected with such
riotous and nocturnal revelry. NcAvtown joins Arda,
the conspicuous and rural residence of the late Red-
mond Carroll, Esquire, the father of Miss Betty Carroll,
so well-known in the fashionable world ; and though not

81

a good figure, one of the most graceful dancers of her
tlay. Newtown is about two miles from the old ruin of
Glinsk, and four from Ballymoe, a post-town on the
banks of the River Suck.

Ballymoe, the residence of Mr. Baggot, is delightfully
situated on a handsome island on the bordei's of Gal-
way, at the influx of two large rivers, called the Suck
and the Bohilla — rivers on which the late Dennis
O'Connor of Willsbrook built one of the best flour-
mills in this neighbourhood. The magnitude of these
rapid streams, which at the extremity of this much -im-
proved village unite into one, (and separate the coun-
ties of Galway and Roscommon,) in a lonely glen, on
which the Elysian and diversified demesne of the
beautiful and much-admired Dundermott smiles, with
all its natural advantages, might well make the im-
mortal Goldsmith describe it as another Auburn, the
*' loveliest village of the plain." Ballymoe is ten miles
from the town of Roscommon, and about seventy-
six from the City of Dublin. The noble ruin of the
house of O'Conor Don, called Ballintober, is within
two miles of Ballymoe : the remains of its former great-
ness are, four ruinous, dark, and dismal-looking castles,
built in the ninth century. These castles were fortified
by a very strong wall, about forty feet high and eight
feet broad, surrounded with a deep dyke, which, in for-
mer days, retained some depth of water. The only en-
trance into these castles was a small narrow gate, witli
a recess on each side for a sentinel, and one or two
spike holes looking in different direction ; and on the
storey over this was a strong set-offj Vv'ith open gutters,
from which boiling- water or lead was poured on such as
came on hostile messages to assail the inmates. It was
impossible to take this castle of the O'Conors by sur-
prise, unless treachery were carried on by those intrusted
with the protection of the palace and garrison. Previous

M

82

to this castle being built, the royal residence \vas on tlic
beautiful plains of Rathcroughan, from which the Con-
naught Kings got the appellation, according to the
Irish language, of Reigh-Cronghan. In those days the
nionarchs were annually elected, as we do now-a-days
Sir William Blink, or Bradley King, chief magistrates:
so that the O'Neills, the O'Donnells, the O'Moores, the
O'Haras, the O'Rourkes, and such other nobles of the
island as offered themselves as candidates, were crowned,
according to the choice of the people — which choice
should be confirmed by the clergy, and the chosen
anointed with holy oil, and crowned by the Arch-
bishop of the diocese in which the election took place.
In later days, when Druidism was annihilated, and
the Catholic Church, with all its magnificent splen-
dour, established on its Pagan ruins, inw were elected
save those distinguished for their piety, magnanimity,
and warlike valour in the field of battle. These vir-
tues and great endo\vments were predominant in the
illustrious sons and lineal heirs of O'Conor, which
caused their return and perpetual election for t^vo cen-
turies previous to Henry the Second of England assum-
ing any authority in this kingdom. During the Vice-
royship of the Virgin Queen's gallant commander,
Walter Devereux, he was raised to the peerage for sig-
nal services and graces special — thereby wrenching from
the heirs of the ancient and noble family of the De
Veres, the title of Earls of Essex : like the titles taken
from the Talbots, the O'Briens of Clare, the Clancarthys,
and a thousand others I could name in our own times.
However, in the words of the virtuous and lamented
3Irs. O' Noodle, of Doodlc-do-hall, in her mild remarks
on the castle-rack-rents, and the castle-all-spents of the
notorious year, not of Grace, but of the auction year of
1800, several mighty titles, never before heard of, and
then got up, she says, are vanishing with the me-

83

mory of such revered worthies (as many of them have
paid the debt of nature), and their sacred shrine is
mouldering in the same grave with the Newalls, the
Hempenstals, and the Jemmy O'Briens of their day. —
However, to return to the house of O'Conor : Lord
Essex deprived them of the patronage of the cliurch in
this province, except one or two convents situated in
their own private patrimony. Amongst these was the
beautiful abbey of Cloonshanville, Kilteevin, Ballinto-
ber, and Tulsk ; but in the days of Oliver Cromwell,
both the 0'Conoi*s of Strokestown and Ballintober suf-
fered much tribidation, and were stripped of all their pro-
perty except that miserable mountainous remnant given
to the widow of Roderick O'Conor, who was beheaded
at his own door, at Castlerea, and his wide domains
given to a Cromwellian soldier of the name of Sand-
ford, ancestor to that unfortunate young man who was
cruelly murdered at Windsor, in Berkshire, a few
months ago. Roderick O'Conor, the last of that fa-
mily who inherited the estates of Castlerea, in this
neighbourhood, married the Lady Anne Birmingham
of the illustrious house of Athenry, in the principa-
lity of Galway, by whom he had one son, in whose
person the direct line of royalty was preserved — and
who, with his mother, lived in a wretched hut in a
mean village called Screglahan, or Cloonalis, a short
distance from Castlerea, married contrary to the wishes
of his mother, Honora, the sister of Lrke Dowell, Esq.
of Mantue, near Elphin. This lady built the family
residence now standing ; she was the mother of Daniel
O'Conor Don, who married the daughter of an apothe-
cary in Dublin of the name of Ryan. Though I men-
tion Mr. Ryan as undoubtedly a match much below the
O'Conors, yet I must say he was highly connected with
the grandsons of Sir Thomas Cusack of Meath, and- a
respectable old family of the Nangles, who were mur^

84

dered some years ago in tlie vicinity of Mullingar —
which circumstance must be still in the recollection of
many of my readers. The late Dominick O'Conor, who
died jn August, 1798? ^^'^^ the eldest son by this mar-
riage. He married the highly accomplished Miss Kelly,
the eldest daughter of Robert Dillon O'Kelly, Esquire,
of Lisnanean, or Springforth, near Strokestown, by
whom he had no issue. Mr. O'Kelly had two daughters,
co-heiresses : the eldest, as I have observed, married
Dominick O'Conor Don of Cloonalis-house, and the
second eloped from the house of Cargins, (where she
was on a visit,) wuth an attorney of the name of Nolan,
from the neighbourhood of Tuam. No union could
^ive more happiness to all parties than that of O'Conor
Don with Miss O'Kelly, both claiming an equal al-
liance — he from the ancient princes of the island, the
O'Conors ; and his lovely consort, paternally, from the
great O'Kelly of Mullaghmore Castle, connected by
marriage with the noble house of O 'Moore — her ma-
ternal kindred those of the O'Briens, princes of Clare
and Thomond, O'Conor Roe of Strokestown Castle,
Lady Judith Dillon, the elder sister of James Went-
worth Earl of Roscommon, and her mother. Miss Dil-
lon of Lung, maternally allied to the Brabazons of New-
park, in Mayo, and the Talbots of Belgard Castle, in the
County of Dublin.

Nothing was wanting but an heir to entwine the happy
pair in every blessing — to enjoy the estate of Cloonalis,
and a moiety of the Kelly estate near Tulsk ; however, God
did not grant their desire in favouring the illustrious and
fond pair with issue ; but from their piety and great urba-
nity, having always company and relieving the distresses
of their fellow-creatures, no matter what their creed or
what unknown country gave them birth, they were much
admired. Sheriff Sandes, in his days of poverty, par-
took of their munificence, as well as the Catholic Bishop,

85

Doctor French of Foxborough, in his exile from Wil~
liamite persecution. Such amiable and cemented felicity
never could be surpassed, said Mrs. Dillon, between
man and wife, as I have witnessed with Madame O'Co-
nor and her husband for upwards of twenty years that
they lived together. O'Conor Don died at his country
seat (I think) in August, 1798, and his respected relict
in February, 1814, at her lodgings in Mary-street, in
the City of Dublin. At his death, in addition to the
rents annually arising from her moiety of the small
patrimony of Springforth, to which she became entitled
on the death of her father, her husband (O'Conor Don)
left her as a token of his esteem fifty pounds annually,
to be levied off the estate of Cloonalis ; besides, he made
her over the lease of a house and about sixty acres of a
handsome demesne on the immediate banks of the
copious River Sue or Suck : it is the first residence on
the banks of this great inland river, which takes its
source and bursts most magnificently from beneath a
peak or huge sand-bank in the rustic but rural village
of Cloonsuck, at which place the estates of O'Conor
Don, Viscount Dillon, Baron Mount- Sandford, Sir Wil-
liam Brabazon of Newpark, Arthur French, M.P., and
Mr. Wills of Willsgrove, in this county, almost come in
contact with each other. This miserable dowry her old
brother-in-law, the late Alexander O'Conor, refused to
pay her, which, unfortunately for the heir presumptive,
(the present popular and justly-esteemed O'Conor Don
of Ballinagare,) caused a long and protracted litigation
between the parties, which amounted, in family incum-
brances, legacies, and law expenses, to no less a sum
than ten thousand pounds. The property was put up
for sale at tlie Royal Exchange, in the City of Dublin ;
and from what I understood no bidder was allowed to
offer against the heir-at-law, Mr. Owen O'Conor, who
undoubtedly was treated unkindly by his kinsman, Sandy

86

O'Conorj indeed Madame O'Conor Don did not (or at
least her base-minded advisers) escape the just censure
of the public for the exorbitant expenses heaped upon a
man, who, as his birth-right, was to have inherited the
property on the demise of two aged bachelors, Sandy
and Thomas O'Conor, men of high and noble birth,
but from their eccentric, secluded, pecuniary difficulties
and habits, hardly known beyond the walls of the smoky
and despicable hovels in which they lived, and died a
few years back. The stipulation at the sale, as has been
before observed, was, that any person bidding against
the heir-at-law was to pay five hundred pounds. This
small barrier, however, did not prevent the late Henry
Moore Sandford, Esq. of Castlerea, from bidding. He
also joined the auction of 1800, for which he was
created Baron Mount-Sandford, of Castlerea, in the
County of Roscommon, which title, on the death of an
old veteran of seventy-eight, sinks into the same grave
of extinction with the Castlecootes, the Lecales, and
many other of those M'orthies who have departed this
life, without leaving so much as an heir to inherit the
sinecures, useless stations, and biblical knowledge which
they prodigally lavished and diflused amongst their
starving and ragged tenantry. The long catalogue of
their munificence — for who could sully their revered
memories ? — I leave to more able and efficient biogra-
phers, who have more time, and I am sure more money,
than I have, to describe.

After Lord Mount-Sandford lost his five hundred
pounds in bidding against Mr. Owen O'Conor, who had
his purse-bearer (Long Terence — oi*, what do I say ? —
Long Jack Farrell, the Connaught iew,) at his elbow,
he became the purchaser of that part of Cloonalis, and
the remainder of that estate is in his possession at the
present time ; and which, were it not for the wanton
and useless litigation that his enemies carried on to

87

incur expense, might have come into his possession
without one farthing expense, Avhich was the intention
of Daniel and his heir Dominick O'Conor, Esqrs., when
they willed the reversion of those estates to their kins-
man, the heirs of the ancient and romantic Ballina-
gare — a patrimony in the possession of that family for
upwards of one thousand years ; and forsooth, that great
pillar of new-lightism, Lord Lorton, in his sacred cru-
sades, at a Brunswick Meeting, not many months back,
was at no small loss, in his address to his brethren in
piety, the Kilmains, the Clancarthys, the Farnhams, and
the Gideon Ouseleys, to know (from his recent assump-
tion or obscurity, as we must suppose,) who this rigid
Papist (the O'Conor Don) was. Strange times ! — how
they are altered ! — a ruler in the county, and not know
O'Conor Don. If those zealots had the modesty to look
over their own pedigree — surely if not led on by some
infatuation in diflfusing those acrimonious discords
under the semblance of enforcing religious knowledge
upon the natives, suppressing the further growth of
Popery, and propagating those disgraceful litigations
that brought some of his Lordship's auditors into great
celebrity — they would find that O'Conor Don's family
had an inheritance in that county many centuries pre-
vious to the barbarous and merciless usurpation that
unexpectedly threw the ancient patrimony of the mag-
nificent Abbey of Boyle, and the other manors wrenched
from the noble house of Coolavin, into the possession of
his ancestors, now-a-days called the Kingston estates,
in the County of Roscommon.

After the lamented death of my husband, said Cathe-
rine O'Conor Don, I was forced out of my own house
by Mr. James Hughes, to go on a visit to his family to
a grand mansion, newly built, in the village of Ballagh-
aderreen, in Mayo. This Mr. Hughes, added she, was
my maternal kinsman, as one of the Miss Dillons of

88

Lung, in an unguarded hour, eloped with his father, a
struggling shopkeeper, from some part of Leitrim. —
However, though some time elapsed before this uncon-
trolable daughter was noticed by the Dillon family, they
grew into opulence by their industry, and that was no
small inducement in forgiving the imprudent alliance
that some daughters frequently make to the great
annoyance of their more respectable families. I did go
to Mr. and Mrs. Hughes's, said she, and only intended
to stop a few days ; but, to my misfortune, I stopped
there too longj I lent money which I never got, and
was dreadfully annoyed before I got out of their clutches.
I blame Viscount Dillon for many of my misfortunes :
he was left my guardian and protector, and chief exe-
cutor in my husband's will. He left the kingdom ; and,
like many others of the nobility, became an absentee.
On the death of the Honourable Miss Phibbs, who was
the daughter of Lord Mulgrave, of Yorkshire, Lord
Dillon married an actress of the Opera-House in Lon-
don, by \vhom he had a second family. He took a house
in Fitzroy-square, and from that period I never saw him
till the autumn before he died. In the year 1813 he
visited this country, merely to make new leases to his
tenantry, where death, with that unkindness with which
h^ assailed the immortal Sir John Calf, took him by
surprise. Viscount Dillon was determined, like other
people of fashion, to die in London, where he could be
interred with that dignity and pomp due to his great
ancestors ; but subtle death, more rogueish than a fox,
took him in the mountains of Mayo, and put an end to
his pious existence. His Lordshijj's remains were depo-
sited, in a wooden chest, in the Popish Abbey of Bally-
liaunus, from which his splendid coffin was stolen by
some neighbouring rustics, who took the mock-mount-
ing to be pure gold. This incensed the Dowager in
Fitzroy-square so much against the Irish paupers in St.

8d

Giles's, that instead of twopence to each appiicftnt at
the great feasts at Christmas and Easter, the vulgar
souls, called the Connaughtonians, only got one half-
penny as Amen money.

When I found my money, says Madame O'Conor
Don, expended at James Hughes's, I came to live on
my own estate near Strokestown, where I was haunted
by my good nephew, Bob Nolan, and a priest called
Father Bryan, There was no man so fond of making
money by land and cattle-jobbing than the gay Father
Bryan. My life, says she, was spared, but I was plucked
of every thing portable. How things went on in the
under part of the house I cannot say, as Bob Nolan
managed as he thought proper; but one thing I do
know, that I was continually tormented with vulgar
and intrusive visitors. Father James Kelly and his
niece chiefly lived in the house ; and a thousand others
came daily, who represented themselves as being allied
to me either by my father or mother. These are the com-
forts of an aged and lone gentlewoman, in the remote
districts of Connaught — continually tormented by a gang
of itinerant applicants and a group of naked paupers,
each and every one addressing you as your cousin Kit,
or your kinsman Pat. From this you m ill see I was
heartily sick of the country ; but wait a little and you
will feel for me, says this excellent and much per-
secuted woman, in a letter to a friend in Dublin : —
In my old age and unhappy widowhood I put my-
self under the protection of my ungrateful nephew,
Robert Nolan; but he changed his mind, and told
me he had a wish to go into the army, and join a
new regiment, called the 101st, under the command
of the Honourable Augustus Dillon, then Member of
Parliament for the County of Mayo. To this I gave my
assent, and what pecuniary aid I could conveniently
spare at the time. He mentioned to me a few days pre-

00

vioiis to his going oft' to Hull, in Yorkshire, which wa««
the depot or head-quarters of the regiment, that he
hoped I would not forget him in my will : I answered,
fi'om the many deceptions I met with since the death of
my husband, that I should not hold myself responsible,
by any promise or engagement ; that any friendship in
my intentions or reminiscences at my death, depended
solely on his own good conduct. Well, then, Ma-
dame, says he, will you resign your claim to the Mac-
Guire estate in Sliverbane to me : 1 answered, Yes.
'Accordingly, he sent for a neighbouring quack Doctor,
who sometimes performed the duties of a village school-
master, of the name of James M'Dermott, an expert
writer. A deed, adds she, as I thought to the purpose
I intended, was written ; but it seems the gentiy com-
bined, and had two deeds. The mock document was
read to me one night after dinner ; but what did I get
to sign, while I was adjusting my spectacles, but a deed
which conveyed all my real and personal estate, goods,
chattels, plate, moveables, &c. &c., after I departed this
life, to Robert Nolan, his heirs and assigns. This
false document was witnessed by an honest party that
Bob Nolan selected, by special invitation, on the occa-
sion, which was Mr. Anthony Dillon, a kinsman, and an
ensign in the same regiment ; Fergus O'Beirne, a shop-
keeper in the old rotten borough of Tulsk ; and Mr.
James M'Dermott, who, from being a bleeding doctor,
became an attorney-at-law. The morning after, it
seems, this precious and roguish parchment was sold to
a neighbouring pawn-browker, or money-lender, of the
name of Jack Farrell, who, as that voracious class of
persons always assert, advanced the uttermost farthing j
which, on the whole, was only a few hundred pounds,
of which young Nolan was in need to equip him for the
regiment, previous to their going to Canada. Thus,
says this unfortunate old lady, in the 78th year of my

91

age, was I plunged in law with Jack Farrell, a man of
low birth, who in his early days kept a chandler's shop
in the very neighbourhood in which 1 was born. Had
Mr, John Farrell, adds she, when in negotiation with
my nephew, come to me, I would have satisfied him in-
stantly with respect to the fraud carried on, to the no
small injury of both parties. This litigation was brought
to a record in the Court-house of Roscommon in (I think)
1812, on which occasion Lieutenant Dillon, to his great
annoyance, was summoned from Halifax to attend,
which, by order of his Royal Highness the Com-
mander-in-Chief, he was obliged to obey. Mr. Dillon,
after giving his evidence with brevity, and indeed in-
tegrity, was most unmercifully assailed in the cross-
examination by Mr. Farrell's bar of lawyers j nor was
he treated by those of his kinswoman, Madame O'Conor
Don, with less clemency, for, notwithstanding all his
trouble and expence, he never received so much as one
sixpence — although he was threatened with dismissal
from the service in a few months afterwards, and that in
the most unjustifiable manner. Most of my readers
must recollect the sanguinary duel that took place in
the autumn of 1813, in the Isle of Wight, between Lieu-
tenants Maguire and Blundell, wherein the unfortunate
Mr. Blundell, who was only a few days married, was
mortally wounded ; and, strange to say, Mr. Dillon, who*
neither aided nor assisted, was thrown into prison for
four months for not preventing the duel, as being the
highest in authority in the garrison at the time. I have
known several duels to take place, but I never knew an
instance where any of the parties concerned suffered so
much, and that so unjustly, as Mr. Dillon. All these
unexpected misfortunes he suffered solely on account of
Mr. Nolan's deed of sale to Mr. Farrell. So help me
God, said this worthy young gentleman when I saw him
in London in 1810, had I known that I was to endure,

So much trouble and misfortune when 1 parted the regi-
ment in Halifax, I would have committed suicide on
leaving that hospitable and charming country.

Mris. Mary Davis of Castlerea, in her youthful days the
beautiful and accomplished Miss Dillon of Bracklon, was
cross-examined by Mr. Farrell's lawyers in a manner that
excited her feelings so much, that she was obliged to be
carried out of Court — particularly on some letters that she
wrote, perhaps carelessly, to Mr. Nolan, (previous to his
joining the army,) being read. In one of those letters, it
seems that Mr. Nolan got a pressing invitation to come
to the chamber of a married lady. They may be false ;
perhaps Mrs. Davis never wrote such a letter ; however,
as the lady which this letter alluded to is I hope in a
better world — ^for the sake of the family with whom she
was connected, and not for her ovt-n, as in many respects
they were a disgrace to society — I forbear commenting
upon the disgraceful conduct and execration of such
unpardonable levity in either of the females. Much to
the credit of Mr. Fergus O'Beirne, when examined on
this great trial he confessed that he was aware, previous
to his putting his signature to the fraudulent document,
of Mr. Nolan's intentions to impose on his aunt, with
no other view than to obtain money from Mr. Farrell to
purchase uniform and other requisites, in order to make
that appearance in the regiment his rank as a gentle-
man and an officer required. Madame O'Conor, I may
say, gained the suit, but not without great expense,
and losing the small townland of Cloonart, near Tulsk,
which was awarded to John Farrell, in lieu of the money
he advanced. Unquestionably the whole transaction
was a gross fraud upon an old lady, whose life, from the
day of her husband's death till the moment of her own
happy release from this earthly vale of misery and vora-
ciousness, was nothing but a scene of litigation, fraud,
and exorbitant exactions; she was often assailed by

93

many of her needy and remote kindred by the most
virulent, unjustifiable, and acrimonious insolence that
ever fell from the lips of a foul-mouthed Billingsgate —
even the attention of her own cousin, Tom Dillon of
Belgard Castle, did not escape their censure; and a
most daring ruffian, the son of a pedagogue called Jack-
of-the-TFall, from near Loughrea, who married an ideot
of the name of French, and getting to be a hackney
quill-driver in an attorney's office, called himself no less
a personage than William French Kelly, Esq., had the
audacity to write her a most insulting letter, couched in
language too obscene to meet the public eye. This
Kelly married a sort of a milliner of the name of Davis,
who in her early days was bound apprentice in Dublin,
chiefly through the bounty of the benevolent Madame
O'Conor and some other friends — though (said Madame
O'C.) I never laid my eyes on this fine woman till, at the
solicitation of my maid, after repeated calls at my lodg-
ings in Dorset-street for assistance, I ordered her to be
shewn to the back-drawing-room, to hear what she had
to communicate. She said so much, about her kindred
with the Dillons, Plunketts, Beggs, and her Cromwel-
lian cousins, the Davises of Cloonshanville, that it
would puzzle a public reporter to get at either ends of
her discourse. The atrocities of her ancestors, said
the Connaught Queen, in the Abbey of Cloonshanville,
in putting the inmates to the last torture, and demolish-
ing the noble edifice to that ruinous state in which it
appears as you pass the French- Park road, is still fresh
in the minds of the natives of that county. Was I not
a credulous and a weak woman to believe her ? What
good could be expected from the progeny of such per-
secuting ancestors, who slew the priests of the most
High God, while in the very act of offering the sacrifice
of the sacred and holy Eucharist in the sanctuary raised
by the voluntary contributions of the people? They

94

got, added she, the spoils and ransacking of the church-—
that church God ordained to be the house of prayer,
but which those despoilers turned into a den of thieves.
But where are they now ? Have they not vanished, and
the ill-gotten fruits of their oppression gone into strange
hands ? Nothing remains of the great bulwark of the
Cromwellian greatness but an old thatched hovel, with
its mossy and weather-beaten end close by the road
side ; its front, which is adorned with two small win-
dows, overlooks this old demolished convent, which is
the depository of all that was mortal of those brigands
who espoused the cause of that fanaticism of which the
humane usurper himself was the high priest. The noble
ruin of Cloonshanville, which has sternly outlived the
various vicissitudes and persecutions of many ages, de-
serves no mean pre-eminence amongst the collections
compiled by a celebrated author, which he designates
as The Antiquities of Ireland. But, pardon me, said
this excellent woman, for following Mrs. Margaret
Davis, or Kelly, not into the Convent of St. Denis, but
Cloonshanville. Here I leave her, added she, among
the bogs of Loughbally, and return to the eminent
rogue — not lawyer — her husband, ^vho tormented me
with petitions and recommendations of his integrity and
fidelity; and if I employed him in any situation as
deputy agent, or to look over some papers that a person
of the name of Leonard, an attorney, left unsettled at
the time of his death, which was premature and sudden,
many of them vrould be returned without being settled.
This is the case (in general) with many of those honest
persons ; and, according to the recent confession of old
superannuated Lord Eldon, thousands of them profess
to be lawyers, though their judgment is far from decid-
ing with equity — to the great injury of the public, they
fill situations of trust, profit and emolument, which they

95

are by no means competent to fill from their want of
legal knowledge.

Poor Mr. French Kelly was the last, I am sure, that
should disgrace the list of attorneys' clerks — for if per-
jury, open fraud, and the basest forgery that ever was
attempted to be put forth as a genuine document, is
to be discountenanced, this French Kelly, by his
proneness to ardent spirits, spared (in his death) Jack
Ketch the trouble of alarming that clutch of blue pigeons
that we see flying on the slapper of Newgate getting a
sudden jerk, with many a deserving object : Fauntleroy
or Jemmy O'Brien were hood-winked in adroitness of
their profession when compared to the heir-presumptive
of Jack-of-the-TVall. He and his wife followed me,
says Madame O'Conor, to Strokestown, in the County of
Roscommon ; and feeling for their great poverty, I or-
dered my door to be opened to receive them, not think-
ing they would have the impudence to stop more than
one night. Far from this, however, they soon made
themselves masters; and I was only a lodger in the
house for which I paid rent and taxes. My servants be-
gan to miss some sheeting and table-linen, but previous
to any report being made to me of these things, one of
my trunks had been broken open, and a large sum of
money, which my steward, Francis Bannahan, paid me
the day before, taken therefrom, as also some family
papers ; which honest Margaret Davis, by way of intro-
ducing herself into high life, brought to a gentleman al-
lied to the O'Conors, which he owned to me he had in
his possession. Some time after. Lady Hartland, and
many others in and about Strokestown, took a dislike to
visit me, in consequence of this French Kelly and his
wife being admitted into my house. At this time he
went to the Most Reverend Doctor Thomas Troy, Ca-
tholic Archbishop of Dublin, and got £500 in my name.
He then got himself sworn an attorney of the Courts of

06

Jiustice. This, says she, I overlooked, as I did not wish
to hang the villain. But will you not be surprised when
I tell you, that he furnished me with a bill of costs to the
amount of £2000. What he did for it I am at a loss to
know, save his attention in the suit against Jack Far-
rell, for which he was doubly paid before he drove a
quill. In this way, says she, I was tormented, paying
one knave to up-set the villainy of another. This bill
was taxed by Master Ellis, who reduced it to £1500.
My counsel, Mr. Boyd, who afterwards married the
brisk widow of the late Earl of Belvedere, recommended
me an attorney, whose name was Killikelly, of Middle
Gardiner-street, Dublin ; but who was managing clerk
to this attorney ? — William Davis, the brother-in-law of
French Kelly. The news that passed, of course, reached
my enemies ; but between party and party, paying to
this one and the other, I was as poor as Job. William
Davis introduced himself to me, by saying he would do
all in his power to set aside the rogueish intentions of
his sister and brother-in-law, if I only gave him my
dividend arising from the effects of William Kelly, who
kept a flour and whiskey-shop in the town of Strokes-
town, to whom I lent £500 ; ' but on commencing busi-
ness as a wine-merchant in Gardiner-street, he called a
meeting of his creditors, served me with notice of his
bankruptcy, and to this moment I have not got so much
as one shilling of that sum — nor do I expect it. William
Kelly married a Miss Laughing^ from some part of the
King's or Queen's County — and a pretty joke it was, for
they laughed me out of my £500. I have to add, that
after Madame O'Conor Don's death, Mr. Kelly paid
Davis the few pounds to which, as a creditor, the deceasefl
lady was entitled. Mr. William Davis was maternally
allied to the unhappy woman who, in her old age, was a
prey to various annoyances and gross impositions j and
to convince his kinswoman of his attachment to her per-

97

8oii, Mr. Davis proposed a comfortable lodging, which
he considered would suit her. To this the weak woman
assented. This was the unfurnished upper part of a
house, No. 4 or 6, kept by an attorney of the name of
Webber, in Gloucester-place. We all know that Glou-
cester-place is situated at the lower end of Gloucester-
street, in the City of Dublin, and within one door of
the straggling end of Mecklenburg-street ; built on that
low swamp, stolen by degrees, and the assiduity of some
efficient port-surveyors or civic and turtle Aldermen,
from the rolling waves of the ocean. The back of Sum-
mer-hill is inundated during the winter months, and
the chief part of the spring of the year ; not only this —
the front of the house looked into a fulsome pool of stag-
nated mire, and a common dairy-man's cow-yard, in
which, to add to its diversified and fragrant attractions,
was a few amorous and squeaking goats, and one or two
vicious and ungovernable donkeys, besides the con-
tinual growl of a half starved and filthy watch-dog ; the
rear view was somewhat more amusing, and better cal-
culated to enliven and rouse the drooping nerves of a
religious, disconsolate, and persecuted old woman of
eighty-four. The back drawing-room was metamor-
phosed into a bed chamber for the accommodation of
the superannuated Queen of the great O'Conor Don, of
Cloonalis Castle, in the County of Roscommon. Any
person acquainted with the localities of the unfinished
end of Gloucester street, know that I do not exagge-
rate when I say, that the waste space (which forms no
enchanting vista) at the back of the few houses in
Gloucester-place, is without exception one of the most
riotous, obscene, and disorderly districts (except the no-
torious principality of the Great Mogul, well known in
our police reports as Mud-island,) in the vicinity of the
Irish metropolis. A row of filthy huts was joined to the
splendid chamber selected for the happy repose of the

m

amiable and highly-accomplished Catherine O'Kelly,
the widow of a gentleman by birth, urbanity, ami
education, with the small patrimony that rapacious
edicts, sequestration, proscription, sanguinary revolu-
tions, and rapine left. Here was IMadame O'Conor Don
lodged by Mr. Davis, who, M'e might suppose, had no
mercenary views, in a neighbourhood such as I have
described, surrounded with sweeps,^ tinkers, and various
receptacles for women of ill-fame, who, when the morn-
ing star threw light on their abandoned infamy, took re-
fuge in the abominable cells with which Lower Glou-
cester-street and the vicinity of Aldborough House
abounds. O what a neighbourhood selected for the re-
sidence of the nominal Irish Queen ! Her guardians,
of course, were interested for her longevity, and in sup-
porting her high birth and the dignity due to her il-
lustrious ancestors I

Amongst the list of Madame O'Conor's relatives and
visitors in those obscure lodgings, were the Earl and
Countess of Roscommon, Viscount and the Honourable
Miss Dillon of Fitzroy-square, who were then in Ire-
land — the Countess D'Alton Begg of Mount-Dalton, in
the County of Westmeath — Lady Mount-Sandford and
Miss Oliver — the Catholic Archbishops of Dublin and
Tuam — the Catholic Bishops of Elphin and Killala — the
Dowager Lady Hartland and the Honourable General
Mahon — the Misses Cheevers and Fallon of St. Bran-
don — Mrs. and Miss Dillon Hearne of Hearnesbrook,. in
the County of Galway — the O'Conors of Ballinagare,
Mount-Druid, and Tomona — Mrs. Henry French of
Cloonequin-House, and Miss Moore — Mrs. and the Misses
Grace of Mantua-Housc — Mrs. Spaight and Mrs. Fair-
clought of the County of Clare — Mrs. and Miss French
of Rocksavage — Mrs. and Miss Dillon of Roebuck —
Mrs. O'Shee, Mrs. Colonel O'Moore, Major, Mrs. and
Miss Nugent, Mrs. General Taylor, Mrs. Palles, Mrs.

99

O'Moore Farrell of Ballina — Mrs. Nangle, Miss Cusack,
Mrs. Lee, Mrs. Hilles, Miss O'Neill, Doctor and Mrs.
Harkan, and the Misses Egan — besides her own imme-
diate kindred, the Kellys of Tycoola, Turrock, Cargins,
Screggs, and many others — the Lady Crofton of Sligo —
Mrs. Mahon of Annaduff — Mrs. Lyster of Newpark, and
the Honourable Mrs. Butler, at one time the handsome
Miss French of Frenchp-^vk-House, who first married
the late Daniel Kelly, of Cargins, Esq., in the County of
Roscommon. I leave the reader to conjecture, if a lady
so highly connected and so universally known as Ma-
dame O'ConorDon, was not worthy of better treatment
from those who solely lived on her bounty ; and what
often astonished me, not a soul she ever placed con-
fidence in, from her husband's death till her own frame
yielded to the same fate, but deceived her, with the
exception of her last maid, whose name was Bridget
Hogan, and a native of Tomona, near Tulsk, in the
County of Roscommon. She often told me that her
steward (Francis Banahan) and Bridget Hogan were the
only friends or domestics that did not deceive her. You
may rest assured, said this humane and benevolent lady,
that any of my relatives who are in a hurry with my
life (thinking that they might gain something by my
death j, I will live to deceive, with the blessing of God,
and I will bequeath my property to charitable pur-
poses. Her friends, however, advised her to give up
her apartments in Gloucester-place, not only in conse»
quence of the neighbourhood not being as respectable
and the lodgings as genteel as they wished, but because
the wife of William Davis, a woman of the name of
Biddy Gibbs, who lived as nursery-maid with Mr. Jones,
was continually quarrelling with her mother-in-law,
Mrs. Mary Pavis, a relation of Madame O'Conor's, and
whom she obliged with a bedchamber at her expense.
Between ]Sir?. Biddy Gibbs and Mrs. Mary Davis, the

100

house was turned into a jackco-maco-den, or a tempo-
rary bear-garden. Indeed, I recollect one inclement
snowy night, when poor Mrs. Davis, who was undoubt-
edly born a gentlewoman and had seen better days, was
obliged to run for her life to my own humble fire-side,
and remain there for some days, till Mrs. Crean Lynch
(of Mayo) and Mrs. Matthew O'Conor advanced her
money to take her home. I never heard Mrs. Davis
speak unkindly of her son j but her daughter-in-law,
Biddy Gibbs, she represented as an imperious, insolent,
and litigious woman. To expect, said she, that she was
a woman of education, would be impossible ; she was a
woman of no better pretensions than the generality of
those little housemaids that we see giggling about Sau7i-
ders's News-Letter office, in Dame-street. The agree-
ment, said Madame O'Conor, between William Davis
and my landlord, Mr. Webber, (whom I understood to
be nephew or kinsman of that opulent stationer, Luke
White, of Luttrelstown,) is, that I am to pay him quar-
terly. The time is coming to a close — send for Gib-
bon — let him pay him, and take his receipt ; at the same
time he may tell the gentleman to let his lodgings at the
quarter's end, as I am going to live in another part of
the town. I did so accordingly, and got Mr. Webber,
who lived in the under part of the house, to give me a
receipt 5 but on telling him of Madame O'Conor's inten-
tions, he seemed not to relish it much, and made an-
swer in that austere, disrespectful manner that the
generality of attorneys are in the habit of doing when
they have the profitable end of the bargain in their
power : — I insist. Sir, said he, that your Connaught
Madame shall not quit this house till I get a quarter's
rent in advance, as it is my agreement with Mr. Davis,
who took the apartments, that I must get a quarter's
rent or three months' notice. What passed between us,
on handing Madame the receipt, it was, of course, my

101

duty to mention. The amiable old lady paused a little,
and looked stedfastly at a most beautiful and sanctified
model of the Messiah and the Virgin Mother, which
hung- opposite where she was seated on an old fashioned
but rich sofa, on which she frequently reposed when
her frame began to get weak. O, yes, said she, he must
have it — any thing to get shut of the French Kellys
and the Davises ; William Davis is at the bottom of that
extortion — he and Biddy Gibbs wish to remain here
three months longer, rent free; do, Gibbon, pay that
Mr. Webb or Webber — the sooner I web away from
that gentleman lawyer the better. She sent me out to
look for genteel apartments — but observed, do not let
me be gaoled up in a lonesome part of the town, now
that my resources (save my annual dowry) are purloined
and exhausted at law, endeavouring to protect my life
and property against my spurious and knavish kindred —
the very worst and most dangerous enemies a man or a
woman ever had are their own needy relatives. They
affect friendship, but they are dissembling and designing
blood-thirsty hypocrites. Have we a stronger instance
of it than in that villain Crawley, who was executed
here a few years back, and the " Bloody Bodkins," who
immolated eighteen of their own family, and then set
fire to the family mansion. However, said she, poor
William Davis, I am sure, would do nothing to injure
me. I saw lodgings in Upper Dominick-street, at the
house (if I dont mistake) of a Mrs. Collins. We agreed
on the rent ; but I told her that I would not take them
solely on my own responsibility; if a lady whom I knew,
and who was honourably interested for the aged lady
who was to occupy them, approved of the agreement,
every thing would be adjusted to her advantage. I con-
sequently called on Mrs. Major Nugent, who was the
maternal kinswoman of O'Conor Don, and who on every
occasion paid the greatest attention to his honourable

102

relict. On being shown to the sitting room where Ma-
jor, Mrs. and Miss Nugent were seated, after apologising
for my intrusion, I imparted the purport of my mission.
Mrs. Nugent, with that well-known courtesy and urba-
nity with which her cultivated and noble mind was
endowed, addressed her daughter in the following
words : — " Put on your bonnet, Kitty Nugent, and
let us have your opinion of those apartments that Mr.
Gibbon is going to take for your kinswoman, Ma-
dame O'Conor Don." Miss Nugent seemed to like the
lodgings, but when I made the matter knoAvn to the old
lady herself, she disapproved of that street, as being too
far from Denmark-street Chapel, to which she wished
to live as near as she possibly could. In consequence
of this we declined Mr. Collins' house, and took apart-
ments at (I think) No. 40, Mary-street. To this house
her furniture was moved in August or September, 1813,
and in which she lived until February, 1814, when she
suddenly expired. She was generally attended by the
late Doctor Harkan of Sackville-street, but a trifling dis-
pute took place between Madame O'Conor and him
about a bill or bond, in which he requested her to join,
but she sternly refused. After the Doctor left the draw-
ing-room she sent for me, but I could not be admitted
for some time, as Bishop Troy, and Mrs. Hearne of
Hearnesbrook, were with her ; however, after they took
their leave, her maid mentioned that I was at her com-
mand whenever she was pleased to see me. She an-
swered, do let him come in, as I wish to say something
to him on business. When I entered the drawing-room
I was surprised to see her look so Avell and so full of
spirits and vivacity. *' Doctor Harkan," said she, " has
been here ; you know I esteem him as a man eminent
in his profession ; but, let me tell you, I never sent for
him without paying him : as to put my hand to paper
for him or any other person I never will— I got enough

103

of that work while lodging at James Hughes's. Great
as I respect him, and indeed he is a worthy man, I will
not condescend to any such thing." Hearing some
company coming up stairs, I walked into the back draw-
ing-room and did not see her for two or three days after,
when I was sent for to order some wine from Mr. O'Con-
nor of Cook-street. When I entered the room, Mrs.
Captain Pallcs and some other ladies were in conversa-
tion with her. The only observation she made was— *-
" Order me the usual complement of port wine, and
see if Hogan (alluding to her maid) is in want of any
thing." — this was on a Thursday. With some difliculty,
the snow being very heavy at the time, I obeyed her or-
ders. In the evening she complained of being very low
in spirits, but took no further notice ; the morning fol-
lowing Mrs. Dillon Hearne and her daughter called to
inquire after her health, and observing a little change
in her constitution rather inclining to debility, they pro-
posed sending for a Doctor. Doctor Harkan and I, said
she, after the ladies had left her, are not noAV, I fear,
on friendly terms ; he wanted me to join him in a small
bond of three or five hundred pounds, I can't say which :
it would be an infatuation in me, even under more aus-
picious circumstances, to do so j I never will put my
signature to any document but my will or confession. —
Then, in an attitude of contrition and solemnity, looking
at her favorite portrait of our Saviour, she exclaimed,
" Wliat is the world to me : my God, my God, do not
forsake me in my old age." At the suggestion of Mrs.
Major Nugent, Doctor Sheridan of Dominick-street was
sent for, who prescribed some of these useless lotions
which the generality of the profession give when the
hand of death is raised against us. A few days previous
she had written her confession, which from her earliest
age she had been in the habit of doing, and afterwards
reading, while on her knees, to such of the Priesthood

104

as were recommended by the Bishop of the diocege i»
which she might happen to reside. I called on Saturday
evening, and found her seated in an arm chair, in com-
pany with an old lady, a Mrs. Keogh, the mother of a re-
spectable solicitor of that name from the barony of Ath-
lone. " I thank you, Gibbon," said she, " for your
attention ; I know you wish me well, and in such
commissions as I troubled you with I found you a
trust-worthy person. My time in this world cannot
be long ; I find myself getting weak and my appetite is
vanished. A Mr. Maxwell, a man of integrity and great
reputation in his profession, has orders to be here on
Monday to take instructions for my last will ; you may
rest assured I will not forget you. I am about leaving
the whole of my landed property for charitable purposes
with trustees, at the head of whom I shall place that
worthy Prelate Bishop Troy, to see my that my desires
be carried into execution. The poor and the needy
shall be cheered and made comfortable, as well as such
of my friends as have displayed integrity towards me. I
do not know any person that claimed kindred to me who
did not, when an opportunity occurred, deceive me." At
this time she seemed greatly affected and shed tears pro-
fusely. When she recovered from the pressure on her
mind, which I think arose from her fear of being called
from this world without leaving her property settled to
her wishes, Mrs. Keogh, who had remained silent, and
was taking some coffee, laid down her cup, and, address-
ing Madame O'Conor Don, asked her was she going to
forget both her nephews, the Nolans ? Yes, ma'am, was
the reply ; they have forgot themselves 5 at least, one of
them has forgot the family from whom he is naturally
descended, and the other is solely under the controul of
a seraglio of abandoned women. Mrs. Keogh, do you
wish me to contribute for the propogation of vice and
bastardy ? Pardon me, Madam, replied the Dowager of

105

tiie house of Keoijh, I was not aware of that. The re-
cords of the Courts of Justice and the denouncements of
the Clergy, said Madame O'Conor, will convince you if
you doubt my word. I think, said she, with the assist-
ance of God, I will live to see all I am possessed of di-
vided amongst the poor. Think of my aunt Dillon of
Belgarde Castle who Uved to be 99, and I am getting as
good health and live as regular, if not more so, than ever
she did. True, Ma'am, replied Mrs. Keogh ; but it seems
every generation is abridged in their maturity and lon-
gevity. Indeed, said Madame O'Conor Don, I have not
been the same since I heard of Lord Dillon's death — a
H man so strong, and of so good a constitution, to be
cut off so suddenly ; however, he has left his family
happy, with a competence to support their dignity. His
favourite daughter, says she, died at the Dillon mansion,
Oxfordshire, some time ago, and his youngest was lately
married to a Reverend Gentleman, brother to the Duke
of St. Alban's. The Beauclercs, adds she, are de-
scended from that profligate libertine Charles the First,
by the celebrated Nell Gywnn, the favourite mistress of
that satire M'riter, Fielding. Both he and Miss Dillon
liave no small claim to the stage ; therefore glass win-
dows are too brittle to crack at each other. His Lord-
ship told me that his daughter, Lady Webb, is a rigid
Catholic ; while the children of a Frenclnvoman that he
lately married are, on the contrary, the most bigoted Lu-
therans. You see (looking at Mrs. Keogh) how hard
it is to find even that union which one would expect
(from the fanaticism of the times) in the offspring of one
parent. As for the dear man himself, it is hard to say
in which faith he departed this life. He was the first
apostate in the noble house of Loughglin ; and was be-
yond thirty when smitten by the ncAV doctrine of the re-
formation. Is it any wonder then, that the re«collections
of Popery was haunting his mind when the voracious

p

106

gout had a hold of his heart and the pit of his delicate
stomach. One Parson Palmer, says she, offered his
pious services a fev/ liours previous to this accomplished
peer closing his eyes on all that was dear and valuable
to him in this world ; but whether the revered Viscount
felt satisfied that Doctor Palmer's recommendation was
an unnecessary passport at that awful crisis, or that the
sorrowful and humble contrition of his own heart would
be of infinite more importance, I cannot say ; and from
what little Tom Hughes tells me, who is the very focus
of information in these mountainous districts (called
Costcllo and Keich-Currin), his Lordship passed off
without a groan, and without the aid of priest or mi-
nister. He had his faults, adds she, but on the whole he
was an accomplished worthy man. Madame O'Conor
turned the conversation, by saying that Mr. Kelly of
Cargins, who called upon her that day, told her, in the
course of conversation, that her friend (Lord Dillon)
had the most splendid funeral that ever graced the ob-
sequies of any nobleman in that country. Yes, says she,
now-a-days they carry their pride into the very grave
with them; all these silk robes and fine linen should
not be thrown into the mire of the grave ; the expenses
incurred on these occasions should be reserved for more
meritorious objects — the houseless widow, the hungry
orphan, the hoary-head and feeble old man, the aban-
doned female should be reclaimed, and dissuaded from
her wicked life, and from seducing her yet unpolluted
victims, and the unemployed (those disposed to work)
encouraged — all these objects are worthy of our com-
miseration. " Woe unto you. Scribes and Pharisees,
you lay burdens on the people that you yourselves would
not touch with your fingers ; you go round the sea and
land to make one proselyte ;" and when you have him
bought over, by bribe or otherwise, you make him ten-
fold more the child of hell than when you took him

107

under your especial care. In no country in Europe,
says this excellent and refined-minded woman, are the
poor so shamefully and so ungratefully neglected as in
Ireland : pass the streets and the hamlets, and the chief
object that attract your notice is a group of half-starved
and naked paupers. I think, adds she, Mr. Kelly has a
strong notion to purchase my moiety of the Lisnaneas
estate. He is in want of turbary for the house of Car-
gins ; and with that commodity he can be abundantly
supplied on my patrimony, in the immediate neighbour-
hood of his own residence. After a short pause : In-
deed, Mrs. Keogh, says Madame O'Conor, I never see
young Dan Kelly that I dont think of his uncle Dennis
Kelly, who was shot by Whaley of Stephen's-green. He
was the second son of my dear relation, Ignatius Kelly,
by his kinswoman. Miss Kelly of Turrock, in the Barony
of Athlone. He was intended for the bar ; but unfor-
tunately he andWlialey, the son of the celebrated Burn-
chapel Whaley, and the brother of Lady Clare, met at
a house in College-green, notoriously known as the
Hell-Jire Club, where, it seems, this blinking Whaley in-
sulted Mr. Kelly so grossly, that the foolish youth, who
was only turned twenty at the time, insisted that he
should fight him ; and from the room in which the dis-
pute occurred they proceeded to the Barley Fields. —
Kelly, who it seems was in a state of inebriation, fired
first, but was instantly shot dead by Whaley. His body
was twenty-four hours in a stable, at the back of Ste-
phen's-green, before any of his friends knew of the
melancholy transaction, which plunged his ancient and
numerous relatives into the deepest affliction. I felt
sincerely for both his sisters. Lady Crofton of Sligo, and
Mrs. Lyster of Newpark, near Athlone. Whaley was
brought to the bar of justice, as it was insinuated he
took a deadly aim at his victim ; but Whaley's faction, the
FitzGibbons, the Beresfords, and others of that party.

log

rait high ill those days, and he was acquitted. He was-
tried afterwards for killing a poor coach-driver, at hrs
own door in Deiizil-street ; but it seems the deceased's
widow compromised the atrocity for thirty pounds. Mr.
Whaley^ adds she, treated his amiable wife unkindly.
He, however, has another bar to appear before, where
neither bribe nor faction will avail him anything, God
grant he may meet more mercy than he showed the poor
innocent and justly esteemed Denis Kelly of Cargins,
I took my leave, for the last time, of this noble-minded
and excellent lady. I left her, Mrs. Keogh, and her
own maid together ; and I thought she seemed in better
spirits than I had seen her for some time. This was on
Friday evening j and the urgency of business calling me
away, I had not an opportunity seeing her again, as
she died on the Monday morning following. I cer-
tainly imagined she would live many years longer. —
But, alas ! death is certain, but the time and place un-
certain. Her faithful maid, Hogan, and the other ser-
vants, found her dead in her bed, about nine o'clock in
the morning, which was the usual hour to go in to her
bed-room. The Most Reverend Doctor Troy was sent
for immediately, as it was understood she had willed her
property to him for charitable purposes, much on the
same plan as that of Lord Dunboyne and the Nctterville
munificence. His Lordship locked up all her trunks,
plate, papers, &c. &c.; but on French Kelly presenting
a will, made, as he insinuated, in his favour in 1811,
Bishop Troy (very injudiciously, I must own,) came with
him to Madame O'Conor's apartments, handed him all
her keys, papers, and property. French Kelly imme-
diately ordered her remains out of the bed-room, and
locked himself up there for some time, where he ob-
tained possession of all her plate, private letters, and
family papers, to which he had no claim whatever — it
was a barefaced robbery, for of all other men in exist-

190

encc, the same notorious imposter was the last whom
she wished to possess her property, or know any thing
of her private affairs. This I assert in the face of the
W'orld as truth, and many who are still alive can con-
firm it to be so. William Kelly, or French Kelly, or
what you will, is gone to meet his reward, to another
and I hojje a better world ; but his honest and con-
scientious widow, Margaret Davis, is still in the land of
the living — and I dare her to contradict me : I saw the
good woman praying in Marlborough-street Chapel a
short time ago — I hail her contrition. We sinners must
pray, and do penance hard, or we perish. Did Ireland,
or any other Christian country, ever witness more atro-
cious fraud than that carried on to persecute and em-
bitter the last moments of one of the most noble-minded
women that ever graced the honourable circle in which
(during her husband's lifetime) she moved, and to which
(it will be acknowledged even by her worst enemies)
she was an ornament. God forgive her tormenters.
Many of them are " gone to that bourne from whence
no traveller e^er returns,'* and I hope met with more
clemency than they shewed the nominal Connaught
Queen under the cloak of friendship. A long catalogue
of false, and indeed spurious relatives, pervaded and
haunted her, and like an epidemic contagion kept close
to her heels wherever she went, and were as familiar at
her door in the metropolis, as they were in the moun-
tains of Costello, or the fens of Strokestown ; they
availed themselves of her age, weakness, and the other
infirmities incident to the human frame between sixty
and eighty-four. During that period she was a prey to
the grossest and basest imposition. Many of them were
most assiduous in their allegiance and fidelity towards
her Majesty, as they were pleased to call her ; and in
particular that impure combustible of the most glaring
and flagitious fraud, William French Kelly, Esquire,

no

who, previous to his being sent to that receptacle for
honester folks, his Majesty's gaol, assumed the title of an
attorney. This Shylock goes on his bended knees, un-
sought and unsolicited, to swear to be faithful, to all in-
tents and purposes — not to himself, poor soul, for he
was heedless in that way — but to Catherine Lavinia
O' Conor Don, of the manor of Cloonalis, in the County
of Roscommon.

Surely any person who reads the aforesaid abridged
sketch of the lamented and recently created attorney's
life, must say that he fulfilled those sacred engage-
ments. Notwithstanding his robbing her of five hun-
dred pounds, by which he had himself rigged out, to the
no small astonishment of those who knew him in his
ragged full dress in Mass-lane, and enrolled his immor-
tal name on the list of attorneys, he took every other
disgraceful advantage in low pelf; and the robbery that
took place in her house at Strokestown, when a large
sum of money was taken out of her trunk, with a family
deed of no consequence, save to the heirs in possession
of the estates of Ballintober or Cloonalis, from what I
understood from Madame O'ConorDon some time after,
a gentleman (in no small estimation in that salubrious
county) confessed that he got the deed which was car-
ried off with the rest of the stolen property. The person
who delivered him that document was the wife of French
Kelly or her mother; and is it not obvious (besides
several other substantial proofs) that the persons who
stole the family deed also took the money that was depo-
sited in the same locker. But what need I dwell here,
or lay any stress on the reader, in supporting my asser-
tions of the villainy of the insidious gang who assailed
with vituperation and the most insulting acrimony Ma-
dame O' Conor Don, and particularly that wholesale
monopolist in rapine, Mr. French ICelly, into Avhose

HI

hands the whole of her personal property fell imme-
diately on her departure from this life, and also her last
confession, of which the monster at the time boasted,
with a 25s. note attached thereto. I hope the great
and merciful God has forgiven so base a wretch ! — Is it
not heinous in the sight of all men of honour, virtue,
morality, or feeling, to think that any man, let him be
ever so base, worthless, or void of those noble feelings
with which at intervals the most reprobate characters
are endowed, would retain and exult with impunity in
having that confession in his and his worthless wife's
possession. O God ! %vho sees and knows all our evil
thoughts and manifold transgressions, forgive the malig-
nant perpetrators of so wicked and revolting an outrage
against thy laws. The twenty-five shilling note pinned
to her confession, her maid told me, was for the Rev.
Mr. Walsh of Denmark-street, in the City of Dublin,
who was many years Madame O'Conor's Confessor. —
The late Mr. Nolan of Queensforth, in the County of
Galway, the nephew of Madame O'Conor, who was
heir-at-law, and French Kelly, who married the niece
of Paul Davis, Esq. of Cloonshanville, near Frenchpark,
decided their severe contest about the old lady's property
at a record in Roscommon, in March, 1815. French
Kelly produced a will, if I do not mistake, purporting
to be made in 1810 or 1811 ; and I have some reason to
think that Madame O'Conor did put her signature to
some document favourable to this French Kelly, as she
thought him very faithful to her at the time ; but on
finding him and ***** gross impostors, and having
the audacity to insult her in her own house, she changed
her mind, and instead of their being her favourites and
friends, became her most inveterate enemies, and con-
tinued at law until the unfortunate lady's death, which
was chiefly owing to the forged or falselteed of convey-
ance that her nephew (Bob Nolan) imposed upon her,

m

and sold as genuine to the late John Farrell of Bally-
glass, in this county. From the general character, how-
ever, of French Kelly, which was any thing but credit-
able or supported with integrity, while harboured out
of charity in the house of the lamented lady, who in
her old age was a prey to such a merciless and rapacious
rabble, there was another transaction m hich the unfor-
tunate knave was guilty of, and that was a glaring and
obvious erasure in expunging the name of some friend
of the parties at the time, and substituting that of Mr.
William Kelly, who now carries on the business of a
wine merchant in Gardiner-street, in the City of Dublin.
These little forgeries corresponded with many other
flagitious rogueries detected in this precious document.
It was perceivable that Mr. French Kelly, like many
others who are endeavouring to support a bad cause,
engaged the whole strength of the Connaught Bar;
amongst whom 'svas Counsellor Boyd, and a great puff
he was, just going to get married to the rich and dis-
consolate widow of old Rochford, commonly called the
Lord of the Lakes or Belvedere. This was a strange
change in Mi". Boyd, who was the leading Counsel of
Madame O'Conor against French Kelly and others for
years. The first witness called to prove this will was
John Davis, an attorney, and the first cousin of Mrs.
French Kelly. This champion of the law seemed (from
his testimony) to injure the cause of his honest friend
and colleague more than render it any substantial ser-
vice. The next who came to support this lame-legged
testament were the two Mr. Finnigans : their trade (as
they confessed, which caused a general laugh) was that
of tinkers ; they lived in the same house in Moore-street,
in the City of Dublin ; they occupied the under part —
the remainder of the house was let to weekly tenants. —
Just so. Well, Mr. Finnigan, have you any recollec-
tion of being called one evening to witness a will ? — I

113

Imve. Where did tlie person reside? — At the Pipe
Water-Office in Dorset-street, and within a few doors
of Granby-row. Who was the person that received you
when you went there ? — On going there I accompanied
a tenant of mine, Mr. French Kelly, who introduced me
to an elderly lady as his landlord. Did Mr. French
Kelly mention your name to the lady ? — I think he did.
What did he say ? — As well as I recollect, he mentioned
to the lady that I was Mr. Finnigan. Was the lady
young or old ? — A very old lady, and as far as I could
perceive, a high bred woman, entirely beyond the com-
mon run that shopkeepers meet in the course of business.
What hour might it be ? — About eight o'clock in the
evening. Did you get any refreshment there? — Yes,
cake and wine. Did the lady seem quite sensible of
what was going on ? — Apparently she did. Did you
delay long there ? — Only a few minutes. Who was
there at the time ? — Mr. French Kelly, my son, myself,
and the lady whom we met there. Did you all come
away together ? — No ; Mr. Kelly remained after us.—
This witness was cross-examined by Mr. Daniel, of
Mountjoy-square, who was Mr. Nolan's leading Counsel.
Your name is Finnigan ? — Yes, Sir. What business do
you follow ? — I am a tinker, genteelly called a brazier.
Have you resigned business ? — I have. You made your
fortune, I suppose ? — No, Sir ; I have been rather unfor-
tunate — I failed in business. Now, Mr. Finnigan, as a
gentleman, will you tell those highly respectable gentry
in the Jury box how often you were in the Sheriffs'
Prison ? — I almost forget, Sir ; I think three times. —
Now, Mr. Finnigan, upon your honour, how many
glasses of raw whiskey did you take the day you were
called to sign the late Madame O'Conor's last will and
testament ? — I do not recollect. How many glasses do
y^u take this cold weather to ea^e your cough ? — Some-

o

114

times two or three rope-dancers (a laugh), according as
the wind blows, or in other words, according- as my
friends and myself raise the wind. The evidence of the
other Finnigan was much in the same strain, and of no
importance to be recorded, except that they both swore
to their signatures, and that the old lady signed the will
in their presence, as Catherine O'Conor Don.

The next witness called on behalf of Mr. Nolan, was
the Most Rev. Doctor Thomas Troy, Catholic Arch-
bishop of Dublin, and being sworn, said he knew Ma-
dame O'Conor for many years ; saw her when very
young, with her aunt Dillon, at Belgard Castle; saw
her afterwards very often, while at school in King-street
Nunnei-y ; was very intimate with her some years be-
fore her death ; the lady's intentions were to bequeath
her property for charitable institutions ; told him she
had no will made ; he resigned her keys, and such pro-
perty as was in her apartments, to the gentleman who
calls himself French Kelly, a few hours after the la-
mented lady's death, as he shewed him a will, which he
represented was made some years back in his favour,
and observed that he was sure she forgot that such a
document w^is extant, as they were not on good terms
for some time before her death. This witness was not
cross-examined.

Mrs. MacDonnell of Coonmore-house, in Mayo, was
the next witness on behalf of Madame O 'Conor's ne-
phew. She knew Madame O'Conor Don from her child-
hood ; she M^as allied to her father through a connexion
with the Dillon family ; she never heard so base and so
bad a character of any person as that given by the late
Madame O'Conor of the gentleman who calls himself
Mr. French Kelly, and who now claims her paternal
property. By Counsel — Is that long back, Madame,
since you got this character of this mighty heir of the

115

Connaught queen ? — Two days previous to her death.
Did you see the lady as late as February, 1814? — I did.
Where did she reside then ? — In Mary-street. On your
oath, Madam, did she tell you of her trunks being robbed
in her house in Strokestown ? — She did. What did
Madame O'Conor say she lost out of her lockers at the
time ? — In a small paper parcel she tied up twenty-five
or thirty pounds in bank notes, and put them into a
small trunk, in which were some gold and loose silver,
private letters, and a family deed j the trunk was moved,
and the lock broken, and the trunk left back in the
place. How near Madame O'Conor Don's bed-cham-
ber did Kelly and his wife sleep ? — In the next room.
Who did the lady suspect for the theft ? — Mr, French
Kelly. On your oath. Madam, did she tell you so ? —
She did. Did she tell you that she consulted any
person about the robbery ? — She did, her Counsel, Mr.
Boyd. From the bad character that she gave of Mr.
French Kelly, dont you imagine that he is the last man
on this earth she would leave her real and personal pro-
perty to ? — I am convinced he is. You have no hosti-
lity to Kelly or his wife, any more than to do justice ? —
Not the least ; from their bad treatment to her I must
own I dont like them, as, from the various complaints
Mrs. O'Conor Don made of their infamous conduct to-
wards her, it could not be supposed that I could like
them ; but let it not be understood that I have any per-
sonal hatred towards the Kellys — I hold any improper
character in the same contempt, no matter what claim
they might have on my friendship or kindred. Do you
recollect, Mrs. MacDonnell, that your kinswoman told
you of any other money of hers that French Kelly
turned to his own use ? — I do ; five hundred pounds he
obtained from Bishop Troy of Rutland-square. The
cross-examination of this witness by Mr. Vandeleur and

116

Mr. Cranipton, did not in the least elucidate any tiling"
to shake her excellent testimony; and her answers to
both counsel were marked with judicious humility and
unbiassed integrity. This lady is the widow of the
late Myles MacDonnell, Esq. of Doo Castle, in Mayo,
and the eldest daughter of the late James Hughes,
Esq., by Miss Kean of Keansbrook, near Carrick-on-
Shannon, in the County of Leitrim. Mr. Hughes was
maternally allied to the Dillons of Lung, Bracklon, and
Belgard Castle, in the County of Dublin, as also to the
Brabazons of Newpark, in Mayo, a junior branch of the
ancient and illustrious house of the Earls of Meath.

The last witness on this interesting trial was Mrs.
Hilles, the wife of James Hilles, Esq., a merchant in
Abbey-street, in the City of Dublin. Mrs. Hilles is the
only daughter of Francis Coyne, Esq. of Clogher, near
Boyle, in this county, by Miss Farrell of Corker, and
the niece of John Farrell of Bloomfield, Esq. Mrs.
Hilles knew the late Madame O'Conor since she was at
a boarding-school in a nunnery in the town of Galway;
O'Conor Don and she went there for the benefit of
bathing during the summer months, and Madame 0*Co-
nor called in her carriage to see her ; the high com-
pliment paid her she never forgot ; consequently, when-
ever she knew her to be in Dublin she always paid her
a visit, at least once a week — sometimes oftener; a
more amJable woman she never knew, nor a woman in
her advanced state of life endowed with more humility
and munificence to those in distress, or urbanity in her
manners and deportment; in her whole frame was
combined a multiplicity of those rare virtues seldom to
be met with in this age, and yet she never knew any
woman more unjustly persecuted or more virulently
assailed by those who claimed her kindred; her idea
was that those persons felt quite unhappy that their vic-
tim lived so long, that they might fight dog fight bear;

117

nnd indeed her opinion was verified in the action now
before the Court. She saw Madame O' Conor two days
previous to her death, and sat some time in her bed ■
chamber ; she found her in every respect as sensible in
her conversation and as strong in her memory as at any
other time that she happened to talk on her affairs ; she
told her she had the form of a will written, wherein she
was leaving her property (with the exception of trifling
legacies) for charitable institutions, to be distributed by
Doctor Troy and his successors; she reprobated the
insidious conduct of French Kelly and his wife, and
some others of her own kindred, whose base fraud
plunged her in a wanton litigation with my uncle and
others, which left her going to her grave poor and pen-
nyless, so much so, that she could hardly procure the
common necessaries of life, or keep a man servant as a
protection to her in her old age. Mr. Daniel asked her
if she knew Mr, French Kelly ? — She said she never saw
him but once, according to her recollection. Mrs.
Hilles, be so kind as to tell the gentlemen in the Jury box
what you knew of him on that occasion ? — ^The Monday
morning on which Mrs. O'Conor died, (having heard of
it from a lady in LifFey-street Chapel,) I and a Miss
O'Neil, now Mrs. Burke, of the County of Galway, pro-
ceeded to the deceased lady's lodgings j her maid admit-
mitted us to the drawing-room, where the corpse was
laid on a table, without a human being in the room. I
expressed my surprise at seeing the remains of a lady
who was only a few hours dead removed from her bed-
room. Her maid replied, that French Kelly ordered
her to remove the corpse, a^ he wished to examine her
trunks and papers. I threw myself, said the worthy
woman, on a sofa, being so much oppressed at what I
heard ; so help me God, (save the last view I had taken of
all that was mortal of my own parent,) nothing ever so
touched my feelings at the moment than seeing the

lis

remains of as amiable and honourable a woman as ever
breathed, a prey and under the merciless persecution of
so unfeeling a wretch ; even after death put an end to
her sufferings on this earth, to see all that remained of
her puissant greatness and high lineage insulted with
impunity by so worthless and rapacious a knave. Af-
ter shedding tears for the misfortunes of the object be-
fore my face, and reflecting how uncertain our views
and expectations were in this world, in which melan-
choly sensibility I was joined by Miss O'Neil and the
maid, who seemed to feel the same pangs of over-
whelming grief; and after sitting and undergoing for
some time those melancholy and sad reflections gene-
rally felt on those occasions, Mrs. Harkau of Sackville-
street was ushered in, accompanied by a young lady ;
next walked in the defendant, French Kelly, who, on
entering the room, did not notice any person seated
there, and behaved in the most rude and insolent man-
ner, going up to the fire, throwing up the filthy skirts
of a threadbare great coat, and putting his back to
the grate, began to amuse his wicked thoughts by
shaking his leg, on which was an old top boot that
seemed to have seen better days on their former owner.
Pray, Madam, said one of the lawyers, did the attorney
affect no more grief for the loss of a lady who seemed so
interested for him than what you describe ? — If whistling
denote grief, said Mrs. Hilles, it was all I could recog-
nise. You never saw the new squire before or after ?— ;
No, Sir, until within these few minutes, when I saw him
in this Court. Mrs. Hilles underwent a long cross-
examination by French Kelly's lawyers — I think Mr.
North and George French of Eccles-street, (the latter
confessed afterwards that he was afraid to attack her.)
The chief of the cross-examination was to shew the
Jury that Mrs. Hilles was personally hostile to Mr..
French Kelly, in consequence of the able part he had

119

taken respecting- the false deed of conveyance that Robert
Nolan sold to her uncle, Mr. John Farrell of Bloomfield.
All, however, was uselesfi. Mrs. James Hilles gave the
most luminous evidence that ever was given in the
Court-House of Roscommon ; and the present inheritor,
Mr. Robert Nolan, late of the 101st regiment, is much
indebted to her, or the estate of Lisnanean would at this
present moment be in the possession of the attorney's
clerk, French Kelly, of the town of Loughrea, or his
heirs. Not only what I have described, but other inva-
luable and legal information respecting the frauds of the
French Kellys and Co. was also obtained through Mrs.
Hilles. It is obvious that from the aversion that Ma-
dame O'Conor Don had for the Nolans, as well as the
French Kellys and the Davises, that it was not her
intention to leave so much as one farthing to any of
those I have mentioned ; but as she died intestate, it
was of course natural to suppose that her nephew, Mr.
Kelly Nolan of Queensforth, had the best claim to her
property, which he obtained, to the no small rejoic-
ing of a crowded Court. The Honourable Mr. Justice
Johnston was the presiding Judge ; Mathew O'Conor,
Esq. of Mount-Druid, was the Foreman of the Jury,
who were highly respectable; and amongst whom were
John Young of Castlerea — Mark Low of Lowville —
Thomas Nolan of Castlecoote, Esqrs., and indeed eight
other gentlemen of equal respectability. If the unfor-
tunate French Kelly followed the humble avocation in
life to which he was brought up — and had not, through
the folly of his vain and ambitious wife, who had no-
thing on earth to boast of but being descended from ^he
Dillons and Davises, two unfortunate families who had a
long pedigree and a short rent-roll, and what was worse,
by tracing them to their remotest origin, were only
placed in this kingdom as the immortal Hudson Lowe,
who, if we believe my friend, Barry O'Meara, was lower

120 ^

than many honest men would wish to be, as a wateh on
the natives, and if they exceeded the mild edicts or
boimds prescribed, had them hung or shot genteelly at
their own door or on the next gibbet, until the good-
natured vultures of some neighbouring havoc or demo-
lished ruin picked the flesh off their bones, for fear (as
we must naturally surmise) that those spectres, which
%vere so prevalent in those days of sanguinary rapine,
would increase the epidemic contagion that unfortu-
nately raged, aided by the many other privations in all
parts of this country, and in no district more so than
in those parts of Roscommon under the humane gover-
norship of the Dillons and the never- forgotten Davises —
if this Jack-of-the-PFall, commonly called French Kelly,
as I have observed, followed his daily and nightly labour,
earning his penny per sheet amongst his brethren on
the scriveners' grazy bench in any of the nests of litera-
ture in town, the unlamented limb of litigation would
not add to the long list of Radford Roes who put the
country to the frequent expense of a parish coffin, to have
their remains deposited in the family vault in his Ma-
jesty's gaol of Newgate, or, for the benefit of the fra-
grant air, in Bully's Acre at the sign of the platform on
Kilmainham common.

I have observed before, that Honora O'Conor, the
daughter of Dowell, of Mantua, near Elphin, was the
lady by whose exertions the house of O'Conor, now ex^
taut, was built j unquestionably the site selected reflects
no small honour on the lady's memory, as it embraces
several natural advantages. The mansion is situated
on a verdant lawn, secluded by a handsome round fort
from the intrusion of strangers : the fort in itself is a
cooling and delightful shade, covered with drooping wil-
lows, reclining majestically into the River Suck, w^hich
swells in all its magnitude, and throws its radiant rays
on this antique residence, delightfully adorned and

121

protected by the mature oak, sycamore, and various
shrubs of evergreen which spontaneously co-operate to
beautify with their fragrant and never-fading mantle
the castle terrace and serpentine walks in and about the
house of Cloonalis. Though Honora Dowell, s^id my
father, was no welcome guest to her mother-in-law, the
Lady Anne Birmingham O'Conor Don, still her for-
tune, only a few hundred pounds, enabled them to im-
prove their small and mountainous patrimony and build
a respectable house in place of a low smoky hovel in
which they resided, after being expelled from their an-
cient and noble seat at Castlerea. Lady Anne O'Conor,
added he, of the puissant house of Athenry, and the ma-
trimonial niece of the great O'Brien, Prince of Thomond
and Clare, was a very imperious woman, and wished her
son to be married to the heiress of O'Moore of Cloughan
Castle, and though the Dowells possessed the chief of
the estate of O'Flanagan, called the Mantues and the
Callows, a large tract of low swamp and a deep moor,
which in rainy weather and during the winter months
forms into a beautiful lake and almost inundates some
miles in the vicinity of that riotous district, well known
as Loughaughreagaugh, I must own they were con-
nected with respectable families, such as the Dillons of
Belgarde Castle, and the Graces of Gracefield, in the
County of Kilkenny. Even so, the O' Conors Don felt
somewhat indignant at the connexion, which I am sorry
to say proved unfortunate, and was verified in the de-
portment, intemperance, and austerity which the lady
shewn after her marriage, and on no occasion more so
than on her insulting, at her own table, her husband's
kinsman, Daniel O'Conor Don, the last Prince of the
house of Ballintober, who lived a single life, and was ma-
ternally allied to the Burkes of Meelick and the Butlers
of Thomastowu, to the latter of whom he bequeathed the
residue of his former domains, such as Ballintober, Too-

122

mana, Endfield, Carraghreagh, Bracklon, ami some other
manors in the vicinity of that ancient and majestic ruin
of royalty called the Castle of O'Conor, leaving the he-
reditary estates to strangers. This caused that memo-
rable law suit, so long pending, between the O'Conors
and the Butlers, and which undoubtedly would have
terminated in favor of the O'Conors, were it not for the
foolish conduct of the late Sandy O'Conor, who died a
few years back at his favorite hut near Castlerea. The
dispute originated between two factions, about a Priest
of the name of Magrath, who was fosterer to the
O'Conors Don, and whom they wished to possess the
extensive Parish of Ballintober : on the other hand they
were vehemently opposed by a resident of the parish,
who wished (and who could blame him ?) to have his
own kinsman and namesake Parish Priest. In this man-
ner, unfortunately for the O'Conors of Ballinagare, the
county was convulsed — so much so, that cannon were
ordered from the Castle of Dublin. The Rev. Mr. Ma-
grath was brother to a tanner of that name who lived in
the town of Castlerea, and who, on his marriage with a
woman of the name of Compton, the daughter of an old
English pensioner, embraced Protestantism, in lieu of
which the leathern neophyte got leases from the Sand-
fords and the Frenches of Frenchpark of some farms in
that neighbourhood, by which he accumulated some
money. His grandson, a worthy gentleman, is Rector
of Shankliill in the County of Carlow, and many othei*s
of that family are much respected ^ however, Sandy
O'Conor was sent to prison for the outlaw and battery
which he foolishly raised in the country, where the Cloo-
nalis and the Corristoona factions, with Big Roger Conor
and his sons at their head, were arrayed against each
other. Prince Sandy stood his trial and was acquitted,
as the Protestant aristocracy of the county — the Mahons,
Saadfords, smd the Cootes of Castlecoote, felt more for

Ids

the weakness of his mind and the deficiency land gross
neglect of his education in his early days, than any de-
termination to visit such ludicrous absurdities with fur-
ther coercion than sending him home to be placed under
the protection of Molly Egan, a good natured woman,
who nursetended the Prince many years. When one
Ledwich of Ballymahon, in the County of Longford,
found his Majesty's troops with a few cannon in that
country, he availed himself of calling in their aid to dis-
possess a little squire in the mountains of Dunmore, of
the name of Geoghegan, on pretence that his ancestors
had mortgages on one or two marshes, for centuries in
the possession of the great O'Geoghegans. The unfor-
tunate Geoghegans fled in all directions, and, from being
mountain squires and village rulers, became itinerant
paupers. I recollect myself seeing the honorable ex-
heir of Dismal Glen, long Ned Geoghegan, who had
what are vulgarly called bow legs, and was many years
a plucker in, or a sort of enticing serjeant in this dis-
trict. I have only to add, that it was by the insult
Honora Dowell of Mantue gave old Daniel O'Conor, that
the heirs of Cloonalis and Ballinagare lost the Ballin-
tober estates, which for upwards of one thousand years
were in the possession of that illustrious and esteemed
iamily, who, in all the privations and revolutions that
oppressed them, never changed the religion of their
forefathers for the novelty and whimsical fanaticism of
the times.

Willsgrove, at one time part of the O'Conor manors,
is within a mile of Ballintober. The late Thomas Wills,
Esq. who inherited these estates, married Miss Talbot,
of Mount-Talbot, by whom he had one son, William
Robert Wills, who married the sister of St. George
French, of Tyrone House in the County of Galway, but
by whom he had no issue ; she died a few years back
justly lamented, as her munificence, urbanity, and the

124

suavity t)f her maiinersi endeared her to all classes. Af'tct*
her demise Mr. Wills married Miss Sandford, of Castle-
rea, the eldest dauglitcr of the Rev. William Samlford
by Miss Oliver, of Castle Oliver in the County of Lime-
rick, sister to Mrs. Pakenham of Ardbracken Glebe in
Meath, and to the unfortunate Baron Mount-Sandford,,
who was accidentally killed in a pugilistic affair at Wind-
sor, in the autumn of 1828. Willsgrove is delightfully
situated in the vicinity of Castlerea 3 the house is spa-
cious, and commands one of the most enchanting views
of a country formed by nature as a spot on which Hea-
ven smiles.

Southpark, a magnificent seat, built by the late Gene-
ral Gisburn, on the Malone estate, is about two miles
from WilLsgrove. The manor is at present in the pos-
session of a grazier of the name of Balfe.

Castlerea, anciently the noble residence of Roderick
O'Conor Don, who married the Lady Anne Birming-
Jiam of Athenry, and who was gibbeted at his own door,
in the days of the Usurper, exceeded in his unrelent-
ing and merciless atrocities that inhuman usurper
Don Miguel. From that period, I believe, Castlerea has
been in the possession of the Sandford family. Of their
origin I know nothing ; perhaps they are allied to the
entertaining subject of Sandford and Merton J but from
the high connexions they formed in this country since
fortune and the revolutions of the times favoured them,
I must confess they are most respectably alljed, viz. —
with the O'Briens of Incliiquin, the Moores of Kilworth,
and the Ncwenhams of Glcnmore, in the County of
Cork, the Olivers of Castle-Oliver, in the County of
Limerick, the Pakenhams of Pakenham-Hall, in West-
meath, and the Wills of Willsgrove, in the County of
Roscommon. There was a daughter of this house (Cas-
tlerea) married a Captain Bourne of Holies-street, Dub-
lin, and another was unfortunately burned in her bed-

1'25

chamber, in Castlerea-House, by her clothes takmgfire.
Captain Sandford (a most amiable and charitable old
gentleman), on the awfnl and premature death of his
lamented nephew, succeeded to the title of Lord Mount-
Sandford. Castlerea is a very ancient market and post
town, situated in a salubrious verdant glen, on the
immediate banks of two great rivers, which, to add
to the enchanting and diversified scenes of this beauti-
ful valley, form themselves into one. The influx is sub-*
Hme, where the copious Cloonard or Loughglen rivei'
emits its rapid and foaming disgorge into the noble
Suck, and moves in all its magnitude towards its final
reservoir, the haughty and beautiful Shannon. The
church recently built in Castlerea deserves particular
notice, as it reflects no small degree of credit on our
present beautiful mode of architecture. The Rector is a
Mr. Blundell, who was Curate of St. Mary's, in the City
of Dublin, during the viceroyship of the Duke of Rich-
mond : I mean the lamented Peer, who (according to
Sir Charles Saxton) died, quite soberly, in Upper Ca-
nada, from the poisonous bite of a rabid fox. Doctor
Blundell, who had a large family, was sadly in need of
- this fat benefice at the time ; and I am bound to say,
that this great living, worth only the miserable stipend
of something better than £2000 per annum, is rather
a sinecure ; but it suits the good old man, who is some-
times troubled by the gout in his big toe : yet, strange
to say, this good Minister oflEiciates for a wide and po-
pulous district — and the following levies pay the man of
prayer: tithes, Amen-money, and a long catalogue of
Vestry taxes, in the parishes of Baslick, Kilmurry, Tub-
berelve, Ballintober, Drimma Tample, Ballymoe, Kil-
keevin, Tarmon, and the ancient Abbey lands of Moore-
abbey. Not one of the religious houses which were
ransacked and partly demolished in former days, but are
now solely represented and under the pious care and

special jurisdiction of one Rector ; and the tithes of this
wide district divided (as I would suppose with equity)
between this Rector for the time being and the Earls of
Essex. How the Kepple family, whose worldly desires
and silly amusements prevent them from complying
with the sacred calling, became possessed of those re-
venues (at one time the allodial of better purposes), I
am at a loss to know ; but this I know, that this whole
district is annually most exorbitantly taxed, and the
fruits of the tithe proctor and the exactions of the mer-
ciless cess gatherer, divided between one Reverend Doc-
tor and the pious (for pious they must be, when they
live on the spoils of the Church,) heirs of Kepple. A
small corner of this temple contains the one or two fa-
milies and the few Peelers for the care of whose souls
the sum of £6000 is annually wrenched from the most
wretched peasantry I ever beheld, as the rich graziers
(not like other countries) seldom or ever pay any. —
Castlerea House stands within a few paces of the old
ruin of Roderick O'Conor, which was recently demo-
lished by Henry Moore Sandford, Esq.; the beautiful
spring which supplied the former inheritors, with its
usual profuseness bursts into the farm-yard of the house
of Mount-Sandford. The Sandfords, I regret to say, are
almost extinct — the cly male of that great Cromwellian
family now in existence being Captain Sandford, at one
time barrack-master in Dublin j he enjoys that Union
title which moulders into the same grave with his own
ashes, and closes for ever (along with the peer, who is
now seventy-six,) the name of Sandford, of the beautiful
Castlerea, on the banks of the Suck, in the County of
Roscommon. The inhabitants of Castlerea are much in-
debted to the memory of an old eccentric Hugonot, of
the name of Mackvey, who emigrated from the south of
France into our lovely Emerald Isle — for the group of
preachers that issued from the thatched hovel in which

127

this parsimonious Monsieur kept his academy, and in
which he lived himself, without any other society or
domestic (in the absence of his noisy and half naked
pupils) but two cats, Darby and Joan, as Mr. Mackvey
was pleased to call them ; and so rigid was the good
tutor in expecting the company of both these animals at
breakfast and dinner, that if they absented themselves
beyond the usual hours, which was eight in the morn-
ing and four in the evening, they would be obliged to
fast until the same hour next day, unless they could pur-
loin a morsel out of old Peggy Tanner's broken cup-
board — a purblind old maid, who lived next door to
him. Dean Gannon, commonly called fat or plump-faced
Tommy, now of Queen Elizabeth's College, made the
best hand of himself of all Mackvey's pupils that is in
this world, and I wish the worthy Dean every happiness
in the next. Mr. Gannon is the son of a respectable
mechanic, who intended his son for the Catholic priest-
hood, and to which, I make no doubt, he would have
been an ornament. He was some time tutor to the
sons of an opulent grazier of the name of Balfe (a Ca-
tholic family) ; however, Mr. Gannon's talents were too
aspiring to be stifled in the small school-room of a farm-
house. He quitted the County of Roscommon, and en-
tered Trinity College, where he soon distinguished him-
self as a scholar, and got to be tutor to Provost Elring-
ton's sons, in whose time Dean Gannon obtained a fel-
lowship. Much to the praise of Thomas Gannon, he
has done a great deal for his poor family, and chiefly
educated two of his brothers,

Thomas Coffey, the son of a wheel-wright Fahyj the
eon of a smith, and one Ryan, all of the town of Cas-
tlerea, became apostates, from the great success of
Gannon, and are now preachers of the Gospel, and
placed on the civil list as hieritorious Divines j they be^
came neophytes out of pure love for Protestantism, and

128

not for the sake (as many unjustly eurmlsed) of the
loaves and fishes. There are many handsome villas and
rural seats in and about the town of Castlerea ; amongst
which is the residence of Mr. Owen Young, called Har-
ristown; also those of Messrs. Barton, Magrath, and
Lloyd, and the widow Young. Castlerea is situated in
one of the richest vales in this great county; it has
localities for commerce and manufactures seldom to be
met with in more opulent countries. Castlerea borders
on the Counties of Mayo and Galway, and is only eighty-
four miles from the metropolis.

Six miles from Castlerea is Loughglynn-House, the
noble seat of the Lords Dillon of Costello, Gallen, in
the County of Mayo. The late Viscount Dillon married
the Honourable Miss Phibbs, the sister of the late Lord
Mulgrave, of Scarborough Castle, in Yorkshire. His
eldest son, the present Viscount, married Miss Browne
of Castle-Mountgarretty in the County of Mayo, by
whom he had a son, who was drowned at Florence a
few months back. His Lordship's daughter married Sir
Thomas W^ebb of Welford, in Northamptonshire. His
other children (I believe) were illegitimate by a French
lady, •whom his Lordship married sometime previous to
his demise in 1813. Loughglynn-House is delightfully
situated on an eminence, and on the immediate banks
of the handsomest lake in this county ; the demesne is
overspread with interspersed groves, beautiful laAvns,
and highly picturesque and romantic scenery. The vil-
lage of Loughglynn is much improved, and although on
the verge of a deep and unreclaimable moor, embraces
a pleasant view of this highly cultivated and magnificent
wilderness, which a short distance from Loughglynn-
House appears quite a verdant and mature forest.

A few miles from Loughglynn is Errod Lodge, the
residence of Mrs. Arthur French, adorned by a beau-
tiful lake, in which the unfortunate William French,

129

of Eiidfield, who married Miss Fetheretoii of Brack-
Ion, near Mullingar, drowned himself a few years back.
He and Miss Fctlierston did not live happy, which
was the principal cause assigned for this rash act.— <
It was thought that when poor Mrs, French was trans-
ported there a few years back, slie might be tempted to
try the fatal experiment of the " Lover's Leap," but the
good lady was too wise, and is now living as gay as most
folk who take a trip to the Continent, The old build-
ing called Cronnin Castle, in this neighbourhood,
deserves to be taken notice of. It was anciently the
residence of the noble house of Costello, a family who
suffered great persecution in the reign of Queen Eliza-
beth, and also in the idolized years of grace, 1688
and 1689. Theophilus Costello of Cronnin Castle was
barbarously murdered by Dillon's body-guard, or free-
booters, in passing a small ford between this old ruin
and Castlemore Abbey, another monastery demolished
and ransacked by the Dillons and their adherents. The
ford to this day bears the name of **' Toby's Ford." —
This old Castle is situated in a low valley, and although
surrounded with rutty hills, barren mountains, and
stagnated swamps, all in the possession of the house of
Dillon, the ruin in itself is majestic, and reflects no
small credit on antique architecture. The noble and
rapid river named after this magnificent structure, and
which waters its foundation, is one of the most copious
(excepting the Moy) in this county. It takes its source
from the steep mountains of Taurane and Urler Abbey,
some miles distant in the rude and romantic parts of
Mayo, and solely, in continuation, the patrimony of
Henry Viscount Dillon, whose ancestor laid waste the
chief of Mayo and Roscommon, in the reign of the
Virgin Queen. This great river waters upwards of one
hundred miles of the Counties of Mayo, Roscommon and
Leitrira, previous to disgorging itself into the Shannon,

130

anUatlorns in its unoontroiilable career the ancient seafe
of the Dillons of Lision Castle, Lung and Edmonds-
town, all that remains of the wide domains of the heirs
of Costello. The late Charles Costello of Tallahan, in
the Barony of Costello, was the son of the celebrated
Counsellor Costello, by the Honourable Miss Birming-
ham of Athenry Castle, in the County of Galway; his
son, the present inheritor, married Miss Creagh of the
County of Clare, by whom he had no issue ; since her
demise, he married Miss Daniel of Mountjoy-squarc,
by whom he has two children. The only sister of
Charles Costello of Edmondstown, Esq., was the late
and justly-esteemed Mrs. French of Frenchpark, in this
neighbourhood. The late Mr. Costello, unfortunately
for some of his creditors, was tenant for life ; he was
killed by a fall from his horse, a few years back, a short
distance from his own residence. Edward Costello, the
Barrister, was the first apostate in this family. He could
not be admitted in his days to the bar, in consequence
of the Penal Laws that expired in their own mire a few
days back, having been originally intended to expel
Catholics from exercising the authority of a petty con-
stable ; consequently, nimble Ned, who built that rural
cottage, which he called after himself, " Ned's-own-
town," and who, for wit and sound equity, was the
O'Connell of his province, improved this handsome de-
mesne, which is undoubtedly most eligibly situated on
an eminence, and commands a delightful view of that
charming country; it is called the verdant vale of
O'Gara, and the principality of Coolavin.

A short distance from this cottage of the house of
Costello is the noble river that adorns the ruin of Cron-
nin Castle, and in its perambulation smiles in all its
beauty on Edmondstown. To ennoble this sublime and
diversified scenery, the enchanting Lake O'Gara ap-
proaches this fairy land, which comprises within its

131

boundaries about twenty thousand Irish acres, and dis-
plays its radiant rays on one of the most enchanting
districts in Europe, comprising rural villas, solvent
hamlets and an industrious and peaceable peasantry — a
soil luxuriant, yielding its fruits in due season, and the
rays of a salubrious atmosphere and a serene climate
accelerates the toils of the serf, and repays his assiduous
labour with a more abundant crop than any district I
know of in this empire. The diversified groves, islands,
and steep cliffs on this charming lake are not to be
equalled in any part of his Majesty's dominions. The
lake moves in its majestic windings towards the town
and abbey of Boyle, which it takes in its course about
sixteen miles, separating the noble demesnes of the
ancient houses of Coolavin and O'Gara. The lofty and
magnificent Keach-Curran looks on those manifold and
diffused blessings that heaven has so prodigally and
exuberantly lavished on the banks of Lake O'Gara and
the vicinity of Boyle.

Of the noble seat of the Princes of Coolavin, which
is situated on the banks of this admired lake, I can say
nothing, as I have not been fortunate enough in my
juvenile days to see it; but in taking a general view
from the lowly thatched cottage of Edmondstown, it
appeared within view, and deserves the talents of a
Byron, a Scott, or a Moore to describe its admirable and
diversified beauties. With respect to the noble heirs of
the great MacDermott, from time immemorial Princes
of Coolavin, commonly called the Great MacDermotts
of the Rock, (now called Rockingham, and the seat of
Lord Lorton,) to panegyrise this illustrious, though,
from the rapine of former times, poor family, would be
rather purloining from their great and puissant lineage,
than adding to the pedigree that every person acquainted
with the history of this kingdom must confess is justly
due to their valiant ancestors, they being so often con-

132

necteU with the houses of the O'Conofs, the O'Haras of
Nymphsfield, and the O'Rourkes of BrefFny j also with
the O'Garas of Dongara, noiv called Frenchpark, that
it would be only obtruding on the enlightened reader's
patience to give the pedigree of their ancestors and con-
nexions. The present inheritor of the elite of his ances-
tors' domains that the revolution left that family, is
maternal nephew to the O'Conor Don, and Avas recently
married to the beautiful and accomplished heiress of
O'Rourke, by Miss French of Bella, a junior branch of
the ancient house of Cloonequin and Foxborough, who
are descended from the same ancestors as the Frenches
of Castle-French, in the County of Galway, and also
allied to the noble house of Frenchpark, for many years
knights of the shire for this county. Young MacDer-
mott being nephew to the O'Conor Don, brings him
connected with the O'Donnells of Ballyshanny — the
Lyons of Lyonstown — the O'Sheils of Donegal — the
Mapothers of Kiltevan-House — the Lynches of Low-
berry — the Creans of Creanfield, in the County of Mayo —
the Blakes of Tower-hill — the Brownes of Elphin — the
O'Conors of Ballinagare, Mount-Druid, and many others.
The chief families I have described are his cousins ; be-
sides, the connexions of his wife are as numerous.

Boyle, the noble seat of the King family, is within a
few miles of Coolavin. The town, which was formerly
the manor of the great Abbey of Boyle, is built on the
beautiful river from which it takes its name. The River
Boyle is copious, and profusely supplied from the great
Lake O'Gara ; it empties itself into the Shannon in the
vicinity of the Leitrim iron works. The chief of the
Kingston estates were wrenched from the great Mac-
Dermott of the Rock, commonly called the Prince of
Coolavin. Sir Robert King married the daughter of
Thomas Caulfield, Esq. of Donamon, by a Mrs. Jordan.
The eldest son, by Miss Caulfield, was the late Earl of

133

Kingston, who married the rich heiress of Mitchelsto\ni
in the County of Cork, whose annual rent-roll ^vas thirty
thousand pounds ; and yet, strange to say, she hardly
allowed her son, who had a large family, common main-
tenance. The infatuation of this lady was so great in
collecting money for Methodist Preachers and sending
out Missionaries to convert the Hindoos, that she cur-
tailed her establishment for no other purpose but to sup-
ply these sanctified Evangelists the moment any of them
obtained a license to go preaching. This old w^oman,
w^th her other extravagancies, could pay IMadame Cata-
lani four hundred pounds for singing Rule Britannia to
a set of fashionables at her great mansion in Portman^
square, London, and five hundred pounds for a small
furnished house, during the summer months, in one of
the glens under Richmond Hill, while her own noble
mansion at Mitclielstown was wholly deserted, with the
exception of one old woman, who was retained for the
purpose of beating down the cobwebs and keeping the
crickets from taking possession of her Ladyship's foreign
drapery. It was after a long litigation, which I be-
lieve terminated only a few months previous to her La-
dyship's death, that her son, the present Earl, was al-
lowed ten out of the thirty thousand per annum of the
great estate of the house of Fitzgerald. With respect
to the unfortunate circumstance in which Lady Kings-
ton's kinsman, Colonel Fitzgerald, lost his life, which is
still in the recollection of many of my readers, undoubt-
edly Fitzgerald was to blame, he being a man of years
and a man of family, having several children by his own
wife at the time : it was a base action to become a se-
ducer and to bring disgrace on the noble house of Mitch-
elstown. I do not wish to be explicit on this delicate
subject ; suffice only to add, that Lord Kingston shot
the imfortunate man dead at the hotel in MitchelstOAvn,
of which he was acquitted by the Irish House of Lords,
in the year 1794.

134

The Earl of Kingston married an English lady, wtia
was the mother of the present Lord Kingsborough and
other children. The venerable Earl's second wife is
Miss Moore of Kilworth, a connexion, though illus-
trious, to which Lady Kingston had the greatest aver-
sion, in consequence of the unhappy marriage of her
eldest daughter with the Earl of Mount-Cashel ; and,
though there might be faults on both sides, I must say,
that a more amiable wife never graced the escutcheons
of the noble house of Kingston than the present Countess.
Lord Erris, now Viscount Lorton, married his own cou-
sin, the rich heiress of Lord Oxmantov/n, in the County
of Longford, by whom he had the present Member for
Roscommon, Mrs. Lefroy of Stephen's-green, and the
late and lamented Lady Booth Gore of Sligo. The
junior branches of Lord Lorton's family are as yet un-
married. On the death of his uncle. Viscount Lorton
became possessed of considerable funded property, but
the estates in Mayo went to Mr. Knox Gore, who was
heir at law in right of his mother, Miss Gore. The late
Colonel King, who married the eldest daughter of Sir
Annesley Gore, Bart, of Ballina, had no children by his
lady, consequently the hereditaiy estates and the salmon
fisheries of that great town are in the possession of Mr.
Knox, who calls himself Knox Gore in right of his mo-
ther, or I believe the grandmother, of the present inhe-
ritor. The late Sir Annesley Gore was rather advanced
in years when the sly Baronet seduced little Katty
Rohan, by whom he had four lovely daughters. Katty's
mother was many years hen- wife to the Baronet, and a
most faithful woman in her situation. When the ladies
grew up Sir Annesley married this amiable woman ; but
whatever his reason was, like the Marquess of Welles-
ley with his mistress, the mother of Lady Abdy Ben-
tinck, he never cohabited with Miss Rohan afterwards.
There could not be more amiable women than three of
Sir Annesley'g daughters j the fourth was a lunatic.

135

I have not seen Viscount Lorton's grand mansion, re-
cently built on the banks of the beautiful Lough Key ;
but from what I understand, it is superior to any edifice
in that province.

The town of Boyle has many local advantages, being
in the neighbourhood of the best turbary and coal mines
in this kingdom, and the verdant plains with which it is
surrounded, make it one of the most beautiful places in
the known world. The old residence of the King fa-
mily is extant, and many years converted into a barrack.
The Church on the hill, which overlooks this town and
its environs, is rather a heavy building, without any at-
traction. The small Methodist Meeting-house under,
and rather in opposition to this lofty sanctuary, is orna-
mented on the front as you go in to see a talentless per-
vert of the name of Brannan from the wilds, not of Ara-
bia but Mayo, preaching to the brethren and the chaste
sisterhood, as there is not so much as one frail rib or
scabby sheep amongst them. But why am I straying
from the main point. I say the walls of this Chapel of
Ease — for it eases both soul and body — is decorated with
two ferocious black lyons. These and a few Peelers se-
lected from Lord Farnham or the Dunlow Fencibles,
is the only garrison retained to protect the effigy of his
Majesty William the Third and the sanctimonium of his
fraternity, wliich is chiefly comprised of a few old
jtnaids, who found an easier method of going to the land
of promise than holding fast the tradition of the elders
in every age, since the Cromwellian and Williamite
factions took a paramount sway in this country. —
There were very few towns in Ireland, Bandon, Mount-
mellick, or sweet Ballyconnell excepted, displayed more
loyalty than Boyle. The gallant heirs of the Baronets of
the house of King were so attached (not to the effigy of
Daniel O'Connell of Darrinane Abbey, as the esteemed
patriot was not perhaps born at the time,) to the revered

136

model of the Prince of Orange, whom they, their ad-
herents and vassals, that is, such as were paid for their
faith and loyalty, loved with such vehemence, that his
sacred Majesty was placed (at no small expence) on the
battlement of the great bridge, built at the expense of
the poor Popish inhabitants of the Barony of Boyle ; I
am bound to say, however, that the melter and moulder
of his Majesty have done the lovely model every justice ;
he stands erect on this mighty pillar, though I can not
say it is the ground of truth, as the sand frequently
move, according to the flow and ebb of this noble river;
and very judiciously the architect placed the Dutch
General's naked back to the western wind, as the
reader must know that the Prince is dressed in his
Glencoe uniform ; and as some ladies of no small cele-
brity in this town justly observed his Highness's High-
land petticoat, and the other appendages and trap-
pings worn by the natives of that rural country, are ra-
ther short, and that, instead of coming to the thick of the
thigh, if the kilt hung lower it would hide that obvious
defect or kam in the knee. Not being a competent
judge myself of those habiliments, I did not argue the
case with the ladies, as coming in contact with the other
sex often brings intimate friends as well as strangers
to the point of the bayonet j therefore, for the sake of
adjusting matters more amicably, I give it as an injunc-
tion to those fiery and hot-headed young gentlemen, not
to attempt trifling with females about matters of little
importance to either of the parties — a random shot or a
sly insult is more commendable to be borne with, than
acrimony or contumely, that would cause a blush or
a frown in the fascinating feces of our lovely females.
I came to King William's knees, and have communi-
cated my admonition to the young men. Undoubtedly,
his Highness's buskins is rather short, and the soles
seem better adapted for a County Meath drover than a

137

Dutch Prince ; his upper garments scarcely cover his
sleuder and hidy-lilvc abdomen ; his nose seems to re-
cline towards the Netherlands, encumbered with a pro-
dig-ious hump, M'hich his Majesty cocks with a distorted
and austere grimace, as if disgusted at the sanguinary
rapine of some piccaroons, while plundering the neigh -
bouring peasantry, and committing the most barbarous
jnassacre on the inmates of the beautiful abbey just
in view. This scene, if described by Cruikshank,
M ould go off well, and undoubtedly be no small acqui-
sition to the Diorama in Brunswick-street. However,
to return to the neat little town of Boyle, which for
many years Avas a borough town in the gift of the King
family — another East Retford, sold to the highest bidder.
The immortal Sir Edward Denny, Bart, of the ancient
toAvn of Tralee, never was returaed in greater triumph
than the nominee of the heirs of Kingston for this old
rotten borough, which departed this life, to the no small
loss of some needy hard swearers, in that year of grace
and many titles, the never-to-be-forgotten 1800. On the
return of any popular candidate, as well as on the festi-
val days of Orangeism, the town and neighbourhood were
convulsed, in parading through the one street and some
fulsome lanes, displaying Orange lilies and playing party
tunes ; and these loyalists dressed in all the colours of
a gloomy rainbow — the van was generally led by the
Make-'ems, Rake-'ems, or the Take-'ems, that is, when
the Frys, Fawcetts^ and the Phibbs got too genteel to join
such ragamuffins. On these occasions the most revolt-
ing crimes and excesses were committed under the
cloak of loyalty ; various murders, such as have occurred
amongst the terrific brigands in the north of this king-
dom in our own times ; rapes, to gratify the diabolical
passions of a drunken, ferocious, immoral, and sangui-
nary yeomanry, were daringly committed, and the per-
petrators stalked abroad with impunity. If any of the

i38

foolisli and ignorant rustics, who gaped about at the glar-
ing mantles and girdles worn at these pharisaical dis-
plays of Orange loyalty, chanced to utter a sentence, or
even to smile at the ludicrous and absurd scenes which
took place, to the great annoyance of a peaceable and
well-disposed people, they were knocked down, shot
dead, or sent to a horrible bridewell, (another Calcutta
Black Hole, called the Boyle gaol) as suspicious Papists,
where they remained until such time as their himiane
Worships, the sages of Just-ass, thought proper to
send them, by quick marches, to the County gaol. —
However, we have to thank God that the times in
Ireland are very much changed for the better; and
that the government of this kingdom, the patronage of
the rich livings of the Church, and the auction of rotten
boroughs, which were generally sold to the highest
bidder, as a provision for the junior branches of these
worthless monopolists and corporate jobbers, are no
longer in existence, or at least will soon cease to exist,
when God rids the oppressed people of such of those ra-
pacious and ruthless sinecurists as are at present in pos-
session. Verily, verily, I say unto you, those selfish and
useless monopolists, who have laid burdens on the people
that they themselves would not touch with their little
finger, will meet their reward ; and after a few years
pass away, the Beresfords, the Trenches, the Tottenhams,
and the illustrious family of the Magees will vanish, and
not one of their pious progeny will ever again be seated
in the chairs of the Scribes and Pharisees ; undoubtedly
the Kingston family are no burden on the country. —
Look to the Beresfords and the Trenches, and see how
many thousand pounds are paid annually into their ex-
chequer from the revenues of this distressed country,
where thousands are actually starving, and many an or-
phan and widow whose parent and son laid down their
lives in defence of their King and their country, would

139

feel grateful at this moment for a cup of cold water or a
scanty crumb from these rich men's table. Look to all
the money paid annually to the Beresfords. One of them^
the Archbishop of Armagh, between the revenues of his
rich see and the renewal of leases, (though the old gen-
tleman has no charge on earth but his own four bones)
is considered to be worth on an average eighty thousand
pounds a-year. Then there is my Lord Tom, and my
Lord George, who obtained ten thousand pounds as
damages, from poor Lord Bective of Headford, in the
County of Meath, a few years ago. Another poor soul,
the brother of Claudius Bishop of Kilmore, whose son
Mark has two rich unions in that diocese, and another
fat Rector has two unions, well known as Father Cobb
Beresford — these, and their connexion, the sister of Sir
George Hill, who is married to a half pay ensign, who
came here in the Cambridge militia, poor and pennyless,
got into the Church on his marriage with this eccentric
old maid, the beautiful Miss Hill. This pious parson's
name is Thackery, better known about Derry as the
Long Captain, and he enjoys the rich union of Dundalk,
a seat thrown into the possession of the Hamilton fa-
mily (I think in 1688), who afterwards got the title of
the Lords of Clanbrassil.

However, the v/hole group departed this life, and
the mighty title fell into the same grave with the Ha-
milton family. The celebrated house of Jocelyn are
maternally allied to those Hamiltons, in right of which
they got possession of the Dundalk estates, the customs,
and that notorious borough, which is generally sold to
the highest bidder. An apostate butter-man, from the
neighbourhood of Cork, was returned by a nod a few
years back; but whether from the price being too high,,
or getting tired of the warm debates in the House of
Commons, or accepting the chairmanship of the Bruns-
wick Club,^ where he distinguished himself by writing love

letfcrs for The JSrunswick Star, I cannot say ; but thi;*
I liave to add, as I am done with the lirkin nierchant of
Sydney-hill, that poor Father Thackcry has i^ot, in addi-
tion to the fat living of Diindalk and its union, the rich
benefice of Louth, worth about three thousand pounds
per annum; besides this, he and his fine lady superin-
tend the charter schools of Dundalk, Louth, and some
others. But need we be surprised at the signs and
wonders of the times 1 It is not for nothing the cat
Winks. Is not the Baronet, the highest of the Hilts, mar-
ried to my Lord John's own sister ? This is the way
the church property is disposed of in Ireland. How
many needy Curates, with a house full of young cliil-
dren, were in the greatest want, while this opulent
half-pay officer was converted, for the sake fl should
suppose) of his beautiful oratory — for who could ever
hear him but with admiration ! Another fat benefice
was heaped upon a barren old couple, who keep no
establishment, nor do they divide with the poor or the
needy. As to the house of Garbally, there is hardly a
soul of that good family but enjoys some small item at
the expense of the public. The Earl of Clancarty having
been on an embassy in the Netherlands for two or three
years, it could not be expected he would retire without
some token of friendship. By the way of a pension, his
brother, the revered Bishop of the West, got the j^oor
Archbishopric of Tuam, in the Flanders of Connaught, to
support two sons and a group of lovely daughters — the
Archdeacon of Ardagh, who is I believe as yet on the
staff, at one time commanded at Cork, and was a Lieu-
tenant in the Galway Militia — Captain Trench of the
Custom-house, commonly called the house of Trench, as
it is a kind of a town residence for the whole family ;
besides poor Lady Anne and her husband, in comfort-
able circumstances for many years in the Castle-yard,
and at a cosey cottage in the Phoenix Park. Another of

141

this family, who was on half-pay, is dead. I saw his
long- epitaph in the old church at Cheltenham : it praised
him mightily. This gentleman, I have no doubt, was a
worthy man. I do not give this account from any dis-
respect to the Beresfords or the Trenches, but merely
to show the world how this great faction worked to get
places and pensions for themselves and their relatives.
Their career is now nearly at an end — the whole of
them are going down the hill — their great monopoly
and influence are almost dead on one side ; by and-bye
they will not have power to obtain a sinecure for a parish
beadle or a petty constable. The Trenches, the Castle-
maines, and the house of Curraghmore are almost ex-
tinct ill bigotry and politics ; and that gloom of sordid
and self aggrandizement, which was epidemic in this
country for nearly two centuries, has been blown off
and shipwrecked on the Wellington cliffs and the pure
rocks in the House of Commons, to which our beloved
Monarch has, with his usual munificence, given his
sanction. As to the illustrious families of Kingston and
Lorton, they are in mildness far different to many of
their ancestors ; they suppressed (some years back) the
riotous exhibitions and Orange baubles of those igno-
rant and infuriated persons, which protracted trade,
caused sanguinary crimes, and vehement and malignant
animosities. Lord Lorton, though a staunch biblical,
has totally abolished those lawless and drunken assem-
blies, and the consequence is that the town of Boyle,
which was for many years a nest of riot, massacre, and
ludicrous party exhibitions — indeed the very focus of
Orangeism — is in our own times the most peaceable and
united town within the boundaries of this great and
opulent county.

Oak-Park, the seat of William Molloy, Esq., on the
River Boyle, who married Miss French of Frenchpark,
and Castle-Tennison, the residence of Thomas Tennison,

142

Esq., and several other beautiful villas, are in the imme-
diate neighbourhood of the seat of Kingston. The
grand view from Rockingham-House commands a sub-
lime prospect of the beautiful Lough-Key and the lofty
Keach-Curran, which raises its magnificent summit to-
wards the sky, and smiles with exultation at the en-
chanting and picturesque scenery that nature formed in
and about the fertile plains of Boyle. It is about eighty-
eight miles from Dublin, bordering on the Counties of
Leitrim and Sligo, but principally situated on the bankp
of Lake O'Gara, in the County of Roscommon. All
that remains of that noble monument of antiquity, called
the Abbey of Boyle, convinces the enraptured beholder
of its once great splendour and magnificence j the walls
and windows are covered with ivy, evergreens, and the
most fragrant whitethorn bushes. The ruin is on the
immediate banks of this beautiful river, which is one of
the clearest streams that this or any other country can
boast of.

Though I was determined not to say a word of the
County of Sligo till my Second or Third " Reminiscence"
appeared, which will be as soon as circumstances will
admit, yet, as poor Owcnson was born in this neigh-
bourhood, it would be ungrateful of me not to say a few
words of this eminent favourite of his countrymen. Mr.
Owenson was born in a rustic village near Colooney,
within a few miles of the town of Boyle. This village,,
though situated in the great mountains of O'Hara, is by
no means void of those lovely and picturesque scenes
with which this county abounds. Nymphsfield, the
ancient residence of the O'Hara family — Temple-house,
the seat of Colonel Percival — and Markara Castle, the
splendid seat of a lunatic of the name of Cooper, arc
magnificent domains. The beautiful Bay of Sligo,,
adorned with the rarities of foreign countries — the lofty
and justly-admired peak, well known as Knocknareagh,

143

raising its verdant summit far above the othci* inferior
hillocks which have been often spoken of in other
countries, and which, in the language of the immortal
Goldsmith, in his lovely description of the " Deserted
Village," silences the assumed paramount importance of
those adjacent hills and declivities, by saying, " Have I
not the sea and its treasures, invaluable stratums, and
a land flowing with milk and honey as my footstool ? —
Does not the wealth of nations, with expanded sail, in
all its pride, do me homage ? — the ancient town and
abbey of Sligo, Hazlewood, and Tantrigo aiding to the
beauties that surround me — the white cliffs and the
salmon fisheries of the rugged coast of Tyreaghragh,
bounteously supplying my native people with the neces-
saries of life. Is not the verdant lawns and the accele-
rating declivities nature has formed on my verge lulled
to happiness by the singing of birds ? And am I not
arrayed and beautified with the lilies of the valley ? Is
not my summit crowned by the daring eagle ? And who
could oppose him in devouring his prey on my stupen-
dous mitre ? A man born in a country for M'hich God
has done much and man nothing — surrounded with all
the admirable beauties and rural attractions that nature
could form, and that where the poverty of the people
cannot be more glaringly described than to view the
surplus of unfortunate and ragged serfs that annually
and disgracefully crowd the quays of the Irish metro-
polis, and the towns and suburbs of Liverpool and
Bristol."

Mr. Owenson was a native of this wild and romantic
district, and was born in that state of indigence familiar
to an Irish peasant, and in which I was nurtured my-
self — though I am vain enough to think, if I was pro-
perly educated in my early days, I might, from my
perseverance and assiduity, be an ornament to soci-
ety in my more mature age. But, to return to the re-

144

spected Owenson, to whose memory the commtinity is
so much indebted for the superior education (in his
humble circumstances) he bestowed on both of his amia-
ble and patriotic daughters, and particularly the accom-
plished and high-minded Lady Morgan of Kildare-street,
(the wife of that eminent and esteemed physician, Sir
Charles Morgan,) who, from her literary talents, is an
ornament to her country. In his boyhood, Owenson
began to show symptoms of that genius which he dis-
played afterwards in his rude characters on the boards
of Crow-street Theatre. From the indigence of his
parents, it could not be expected that he could receive a
liberal education ; and at this time there was no biblical
or old maiden Sunday schools in this country ; yet to go
to Munster, as many others did, who came home priests
or surveyors, such a thought never entered his mind —
notwithstanding which he was a perfect master of the
English language. As to the mother tongue, the Irish,
as it is vulgarly called, few could excel him — the Irish
being spoken more correctly in the County of Sligo than
in any other part of this kingdom. In his youthful days
Mr. Owenson was taken as a domestic into the house of
a Mr. Irwin, the father (I believe) of Commodore IrAvin,
near Sligo, who were the first to bring him to Dublin,
in which service he lived some years. He left that
family to better himself, (who could blame him ?) and
went as own-man to the late Lord Shannon. How long
he retained this situation I cannot say, but I believe it
was his last service, as he got an engagement at Crow-
street Theatre, attached to Avhich establishment he died ;
he was a great favourite with the public. His eldest
daughter. Miss Owenson, was governess to Miss Fether-
ston of Bracklon, in the County of Westmeath, when she
wrote The Wild Irish Girl, which is considered her best
production ; and the reason is obvious, because of the
excellent and native ideas of her lamented parent, who

145

c>ften gave her bis brilliant aid, previous to his demise,
while writing^ this rare and much sough t-for work. How-
ever, let not the reader imagine that I am going to visit
the memory of Mr. Cwenson with vituperation or con-
tempt for being the legitimate heir of indigence, or for
earning his bread as an humble domestic. Far from it.
Are we not, from the highest to the lowest, obliged to
earn our bread, either in one capacity or another ? The
King, thougli the ruler of all, (God bless George the
Fourth aiid the rest of the Royal Family,) is he not the
servant x)f all ? Did not the immortal Sir Thomas More
wait at the Bishop of London's table ? Is not the cham-
pion of the Constitution of 1688, (which departed this life
in April, 1829,) the son of an humble domestic from
Newcastle-upon-Tyne? Did not the late Lord Arran
marry one of his own servant maids ? Did not the late
Colonel Pratt tie himself into the same connubial bliss ?
Has not the Earl of Mount-Cashel married a Swiss bar-
maid ? In short, if servants, or the children of servants,
are to be expelled and reflected upon, Aimack's great
rooms and the Rotunda would be thinly attended ; nay,
I might add, his Majesty's Drawing-rooms. Do not
these two efficient and trust-worthy officers, whose
unquestionable integrity is as well known in Europe as
in those countries, earn their stipend with as much
assiduity and anxiety as the lowest quill driver in the
letter carrier's office — I mean the esteemed Sir Edward
Lees, and his respected colleague of the London Post-
office, Sir Francis Freeling? Poverty is no crime ; but
ignoble actions, worthless monopoly, self-pride, unbe-
coming ambition and assumption, is detested in every
enlightened and fashionable society. It is not what we
were, but what we arc, that ought to be looked to in the
present age.

Cootehall, one of those beautiful seats that the cele^

brated General Coote, the ancestor of the late Lord Bel«

u

146

lament, of Bellamont Forest in the County of Cavaii, ob-
tained by the Revolution of 1688, is delightfully situated
on an eminence a few miles from the town of Boyle. —
When that opulent and tyrannical family got embarrassed
by their prodigality and electioneering, the mansion and
estate attached thereto was purchased by John M'Der-
mott, Esq. on his marriage with the beautiful and ac-
complished Miss O'Connor, of Mountpleasant in the
King's County. Miss O'Connor's fortune, and the great
l^oard of his eccentric uncle, Ned MacDermott of Cas-
tletehan, enabled the young Squire to make large pur-
chases. This could not be done without renouncing
Popery, as the Act of 1793, though in contemplation by
Mr. Knox, Henry Grattan, and the Secretai-y of the Ca-
tholic Delegates of that time, (Mr. Wolfe Tone, god-
son of the unfortunate Loi'd Kilwarden,) had not then,
passed into a law. Poor John MacDermott was not
very scrupulous about his religion : in short, as he
often observed, they were silly fools who were particu-
lar about swearing a few oaths that would qualify them
for solvent purposes. However, Mr. MacDermott did
not hesitate long, as, having a fine stud of horses, and
being very fond of racing and hunting, he was appre-
hensive that some of the neighbouring Cromwellians
might be smitten with their beauty, and take them, as
Catholics were not allowed, in these days of penal enact-
ments, to keep good horses for fear of running too fast
from the gibbet and triangle of their persecutors. Mr.^
MacDermott read his recantation in Dublin, and came
home the first neophyte of the house of Cootehall ; his
piety was hailed as no small prize by the opulent Pro-
testant aristocracy of the County of Roscommon ; he was
made a grand juror, and paid every other mark of re-
spept, as well as having being initiated a member of the
Hell-Jire Cluh, a fraternity something more notorious
than the Brunswick Association, that was stifled in its

147

birth a few days back, at their convocation room in Br.
Boyton's chambers, commonly called Botany Bay, in
Queen Elizabeth's own College. The reader must par-
don me : the sanctity of the group led me from the road
to Cootehall ; and to abridge my account of John Mac-
Dermott, Esq. a more unfortunate man, save his only
son, never graced the escutcheons of that ancient family.
After his apostacy there was nothing but balls, routs and
dinner parties, hunting, racing and night gambling ; so
that his prodigality far exceeded his rent-roll, and in-
stead of buying in he began to sell out. His lady died
and left him that unfortunate son who was executed on
the Commons of Kilmainham, in, I think, 1796, and two
daughters who suffered many privations. Sometime
after the death of his lady, when broken down and his
property sold off, with the exception of about 80 acres of
a marsh, called Clayboy, near Ballintober, he married,
according to the ceremonies of the Catholic Church, the
widow of Andrew Cusack, Esq. of Rockfield, near Ros-
common, so that when poverty crept in Protestantism
flew out : he died a Catholic a few years after, in the old
house of Killinerty, near Oran Abbey. In addition to
the property left Mr. MacDermott by his father, his
uncle Ned, of Castletehan, left him twenty thousand
guineas, though the old miser had several nephews and
nieces, in no great affluence at the time, all of whom
•were disappointed. The chief accusation against the
unfortunate John MacDermott was heading a mob of
foolish rustics to take by force Miss Tennison, of Castle-
tennison, to the house of Cootehall in the same neigh-
bourhood, to have her married to young Mac Dermott, a
beardless boy of eighteen. Undoubtedly of the two fa-
milies the MacDermotts claim the greater respectabi-
lity, though Colonel Tennison is most respectably allied.
Miss Tennison, very judiciously, left her father's house
and took refuge in a neighboiH-ing cabin, from which

T4S

ike had a full view of MacDermctt and his associatcif
while searching for her. Being irritated from disap •
pointment and intoxicated with raw spirits, the foolish
youth on his way home, called at his uncle's to get break-
fast, but the steward shut the gates against him : this en-
raged him to such a degree that he was forcing his way
in, as it was supposed, to get fire arms, when the stew-
ard, cocking a blunderbuss in his face, shot part of his
cheek and upper jaw completely off. He was carried
home in that state, where he was arrested the same day
by a troop of horse from the barrack of Boyle and lodged
in Roscommon gaol. He was brought to trial in March,
1796, the year that the Peep-o'-day Boys and the De-
fenders were at war in the north and in many parts of
Connaught, and after the Jury being locked up for
twenty-four hours, the Sheriff made his report that there
was no likelihood of their agreeing, upon which they
were brought in a common dung cart to the village of
Athleague on the River Suck, Avhich separates Galway
and Roscommon, and discharged. Young MacDermott
was then brought to Kilmainham, where be was tried
before Lord Kilwarden, found guilty, and executed three
clays after receiving sentence, in presence of the greatest
concourse of people that were ever before witnessed on
the priory lands, Mr. MacDermott was cousin to Chris-
topher Cusack, Esq. of Rahaldron Castle in Meath, to
the Countess of Desart, in the County of Kilkenny ; Mrs.
Tuite, of Sonnagh, the lady of the Member for West-
tneath; the MacDermotts of Ballyglassj and many
others of equal respectability*

Within a few miles of Cootehall is the celebrated Bal-
linamuck, where Geileral Leake vanquished the French,
and such of the foolish Irish as were mad enough to join
them ; and where the unfortunate O'Dowd, Blake, and
t^rench of Mayo, with many others, were hung, after the
battle J as also that respected physician, Dr. Crunipe,

140

who married Miss O'Connor of BallVcaher, tlie sister of
Mrs. Browne of Mounthazle, in the County of Galway.
Young Mr. Harkan of Rahan, near Elphin, was near
suffering the same fate ; but pardoned through the in-
terference of Arthur French, Esq. of Frenchpark House.
In this neighbourliood also is Litterfine, the rural seat
of the late George Nugent Reynolds, Esq. who was mur-
dered by Kean of Newbrook, near Carrick-on-Shannon,
for which he was executed, on the evidence of James
Plunkett, Esq. of Kinnard, near Elphin, a few months
after the melancholy catastrophe, in front of Newgate,
Dublin. The Miss Reynolds, co-heiresses, have married
the late Colonel Peyton of the County of Leitrim, and
Reynolds Young, Esq. of the County of Cavan. The
amiable and esteemed Mrs. Peyton has been recently
married to Captain MacNamara of Bushy Park, in the
Coimty of Clare ; and her only son by Colonel Peyton,
now an officer in the Rifle Brigade quartered at Fer-
moy, and who is universally esteemed, is to inherit the
estates of the Reynolds and Peyton families, in the
County of Leitrim, situated in the immediate neighbour-
hood of Carrick-on Shannon.

Charlestown, the seat of the late Sir Gilbert King,
Bart, on the banks of the Shannon, is delightfully si-
tuated contiguous to the Jamestown Spa. Sir Gilbert,
who was an ensign in the army when he came in for the
title, married the daughter of old Farmer Roe of Wex-
ford. Her mother. Miss Grogan, was respectably con-
nected in that county^ and the sister of Lady Colclough
of Tinteran Abbey. Lady King had a large fortune, of
which the Baronet was in need at the time : she is a hu-
mane woman, and a good mother.

There is hardly any thing particular in that part of
the County of Roscommon, bordering on Leitrim, until
you come to the town Elphin, if we except the handsome

150

seats of the Messi's. Lloyd, Lawder, Begg, and the
humble cottage of the Countess Roscommon and her
lovely daughter the Lady Mary Dillon ; Cloonahee, the
rural seat of Captain Conry, and some handsome villas,
add much to the attractive beauty of the country.

Elphin is a Bishop's see, with a large Cathedral, and a
handsome Deanery. The rural villa that gave birth to
the father of the immortal Goldsmith, called Bally-
oughter, joins the wide district of Tyrearuin. The
country undoubtedly is elysian in the highest degree,
adorned by the noble and copious River Shannon on the
north J the mountains of Slievebane and Rooskey on the
east ; the beautiful plains of Boyle and Rathcroughan
on the west and south. The copious spring in the town
of Elphin is one of the most crystal in Europe, and flows
rapidly in the middle of the wide street, contiguous to
the site of an old abbey j it neither increases nor de-
creases in rainy or sultry weather. Bishop Synge had a
beautiful wall built round it, which was always kept in
good order by his successors. Bishop Dobson, Bishop
Law, Bishop Trench; but is now under the especial
care of that delicate gentleman, Doctor Lesley. The
handsome cottage of Barnwell Plunkett, Esq., joins
Elphin. He lived many years at that rural villa called
Foxborough, and man*ied the beautiful and highly-ac-
complished Miss Scott of Newcastle-upon-Tyne — a fa-
mily descended from a junior branch of the illustrious
Dukes of Buccleugh. Along with Miss Scott's family
alliance and great accomplishments, she brought an
amiable temper and an ample fortune to her fond hus-
band, who, in his youth, was considered one of the hand-
somest young men in the county that gave him birth.
Portobello, the seat of Thomas Stafford, Esq., and many
other charming and rural residences, add to the enchant-
ing scenes in and about the Bishop's Palace, in the an-
cient town of Elphin.

161

Cloonequin, the handsome seat of the late Heni7
Walter French, Esq., is about two miles from Elphin*
This was originally the inheritance of the ancient family
of the O'Quins, of which they were deprived in the days
of Queen Elizabeth, and given, as a reward for his san-
guinary devastation, to the ancestor of the late Thomas
Conolly, Esq. of Celbridge House in the County of Kil-
dare, who married Lady Louisa Lennox, of the house of
Richmond, but by whom he had no issue, which threw
the opulence of that house into the possession of Ad-
miral Pakenham, uncle to the Duchess of Wellington,
and the father of a celebrated preacher, who calls him-
self Colonel Conolly. However, the estates of Cloone-
quin were let for 999 years, by the heirs of Celbridge, to
one Arthur French, for about &s< per acre — the chief
part of which is the best sheep walk and fattening
ground in Ireland. The late Arthur French of Fox-
borough, who died some years ago at an advanced age,
at Cloyne House, near Charlemont demesne, in the
County of Dublin, bequeathed large legacies to some
needy friends and domestics — among whom were two
girls, that he reared from their infancy at his own table,
the one named Fallon and the other Duigenan, the daugh-
ters of his steward and his gardener. Along with mak-
ing the ladies mistresses of all his ready money, plate,
carriages, horses, and furniture, he left them part of the
lands of Flaska, in the County of Roscommon. These
liberal bequests caused no small jealousy in the mind of
the new heir, Henry Walter French, of Lodge, a hand-
some cottage, much improved by the late Samuel Owens,
Esq., while he occupied that enchanting and conspi-
cuous residence, which overlooks the most verdant and
beautiful plains in Europe, and profusely yielding the
necessaries of life in due season. Mr. Henry French, to
set aside the uncle's will, went to law with Miss Fallon
and Miss Duigenan, by which he involved himself so

152

much, that his interest in about one thousand acres was
sold to Dennis O'Conor of Ballinag-are, Walter Balfe of
Heathfield, and to John Flanagan of Clogher, to the
great prejudice of the heir-at-law, Colonel French of
Athlone, whose son inherits the property at the present
time. Mr. French married the highly accomplished
Miss Plunkett of Mantua House, and the sister of Ma-
jor Plunkett of Kinnard, who married Miss Gunning,
daughter of General Gunning of Holly well. Car gens,
the seat of Daniel Kelly, Esq., the rural villas of the
Messrs. Plunketts, and the seat of Mr. Ferrall of Bloom-
field, are in this neighbourhood.

Cloonfree, the handsome seat of Mr. Mahon, deserves
our notice. The late Mr. Mahon married (I think) a
Miss Span, the daughter of a Hugonot gentleman of that
name, connected with bankers of some eminence in the
City of Dublin. This unfortunate woman lived many
years as the wife of Mr. Mahon, by whom she had no
children, but a few days previous to his death the good
woman got in the family way, and brought home young
Mr. Mahon about eight months after his father's death,
who was in a bad state of health some years. The wi-
dow was strongly suspected for living in a state of adul-
tery before her husband's death, with one Armstrong, a
common horse-breaker, and the illegitimate of a gentle-
man of that name in the King's County, who was em-
ployed frequently at Cloonfree to break in horses ; and,
to confirm this strong suspicion, her husband was hardly
cold in his grave when she married Armstrong, who
was afterwards hung for house robbery at Longford,
The Mahons of Ballinafad and Strokestown carried on
' a long litigation against jtfee wretched and much-per-
secuted woman, to bastardize her son ; but all was use-
less : he is Mr. Mahon, and inherits his father's virtues
^nd the family property.

Strokestown, the noble seat of l/ord Hartland, aa-

153

oilier branch of the Mahons of Cloonfree, is delightfully
situated in a charming glen under Slievebane mountain.
Maurice Mahon, Esq., who was created Baron Hartland
in 1800, married Miss Moore of Kilworth, in the County
of Cork, by whom he had the present Lord Hartland,
who married the daughter of a Counsellor Topping, in
London. The Rev. Maurice Mahon of Upper Mount-
street, Dublin, married Miss Hume of the County Wick-
3ow; and Stephen Mahon died lately in England, un-
married. The titles and estates go to their cousin, the
son of the late Dean Mahon of Annaduff, by Miss Kelly
of Castle-Kelly, in the County of Galway. The large
estates of Strokestown was anciently the inheritance of
O'Conor Roe, who married Lady Anne O'Brien, the
eldest daughter of the Prince of Thomond and Clare.
This is a good market and post town, watered by a beau-
tiful river, situated in a sporting and eligible country,
and which produces the best tillage in this county. —
Except the Mahons of Ally-Lewis and Ballinafad, who
are remote branches, the house of Strokestown is ex-
tinct, after the death of the present Baron and poor
Maurice, the best natured soul that ever graced a pulpit
— he seems much older than his own mother. The
Mahons of Strokestown were charitable and good na-
tured to their domestics and tenantry. I knew one Corn-
well and his wife who made a fortune with them ; poor
man, he died quite suddenly at the house of a Mr.
Nolan, near Donamon — and his widow, a second Lady
Hartland, died in town, and was buried in great pomp.
A few miles from Strokestown is Tomona, the hand-
some seat of Peter O'Conor, Esq., descended from the
house of O'Conor Roc; they were at one time in pos-
session of the estate at Castleruby, in this neighbourhood,
which they lost by the robberies that were committed in
1688. I do not wonder at the progeny of these wolves
and tigers idolizing those detestable and sanguinaiy

154

times, as It rescued many of tlicir ancestors from the
lowest and most abject stations in life, and placed them
and their posterity in the mansions and wide domains of
the ancient nobles of the kingdom. Hov/ heinous the
crime of that fanatic, Jonathan Martin, appeared to the,
inhabitants of Great Britain, and to the followers of the
Saint of Scotland, Jack Knox, not many days ago, for
setting fire to that noble pile of Catholic England, so
much admired in the days of the great King Alfred : —
and how little the monsters of the Reformation, the
sanctified followers of Oliver Cromwell and the Prince
of Orange, thought of laying thousands of such models
cf the house of prayer a roofless havoc ; and far from be-
ing reprimanded, were lauded to the sky for their base,
rapacious^ and cruel massacres, and levelling with the
ground the sanctuaries dedicated to the living God.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, these worthies met their
revv'^ard ; and I fear that God will visit the sins of such
Darents on their children, to the third and fourth gene-
ration. lioM'ever, to return to the ancient though not
opulent family of Tomona, near the old borough of
Tuisk — Michael O'Connor, the son of John O'Connor of
Castleruby, married the sister of O'Ferrall of Ardandrew,
in the County of Longford, who inherited the large
estates given to the ancestors of Lovel Edgeworth, Esq.
of Lisard or Edgeworthstown. The issue of the mar-
riage by Mif-C O'Ferrall was John O'Connor, Esq., who
married Miss Dowell of Gort House, near Athlone, by
wiiom he had the present inheritor, Peter O'Connor
Roe, Esq., and the highly accomplished Mrs. French of
Rocksavage, near Roscommon. The small mansion of
Tomona is delightfully situated on the great road lead-
ing from Tulsk to Castlerea and Westport, commanding
a most enchanting view of the house and demesne of
Cargins ; the noble ruin of Tulsk Abbey, and the lovely
plains of Rathcroughan and Carnhill, diversify the scene

155

with all that is sublime and beautiful. Another rare
and attractive scene is to be witnessed a short distance
from the residence of this humble house of the heirs of
O'Connor Roe. The most copious saline mineral spring
la Europe bursts in all its magnitude from beneath the
ruin of the once great Monastry of the house of O'Gilby.
From this great spring solely proceeds the handsome
and rapid river that waters (in its serpentine career) the
noble mansion of the house of Kelly — the village and
great Abbey of Tulsk — Foxborough, the rural seat of
Patt Taaffe, Esq. — and Lisnanean, the remote though
elysian villa that gave birth to that noble-minded lady,
the late and justly lamented Catherine Lavina O'Conor
Don of Cloonalis Castle. Brierfield, the admired seat of
Charles Hawks, Esq., on the immediate banks of a beau-
tiful and deep lake, is in this neighbouihoodj as also
Dillonsgrove, the ancient seat of the Dillon family, a
junior branch of the noble house of Roscommon. The
Dillonsgrove family are extinct — the late Gerald Dillon,
Esq. was the last male of that esteemed family. He was
a most singular character in many respects, and by no
means deficient in the great pride of his illustrious an-
cestors. Mr. Dillon intended to build a great castle at
Dillonsgrove, and after he had raised it to the first story,
he took a second thought that he could not finish it
without incumbering his property -, the work was there-
fore suspended, and never afterwards finished. He mar-
ried an English lady, whose family name I forget ; and
in drawing up the marriage-settlement he told the
lawyer that he was determined to settle a handsome
dowry on Mrs. Dillon, and that he had a large tract of
ground separate from his other estates in Ireland, called
Inchegore, the whole of which, and the stock thereon,
should be made over to his dear and beloved wife, should
she survive him. The deed was drawn up accordingly,
and his servant was called up as the only Irishman in

156

the house, except his master, to sign it a* a witness,
" Patt," said Mr. Dillon, " I have settled the Cape, the
Rock, and the whole of the estate of Inchegore on that
lovely woman (pointing to the lady), who, after tliis
night, is to be the sole mistress of the enchanting Dil-
lonsgrove." " O Lord, Master," said the good naturcd
Patrick O'Muldom, " by my soul you have beggared the
son and heir. This caused a great laugh in the draw-
ing-room, which was crowded to excess, to see an Irish
Catholic squire married in England, which was a novel
scene in those days, previous to those marts for fortune-
hunters being established at Cheltenham, Bath, Clifton,
and Leamington. Inchegore was nothing but about
half an acre of a barren rock, in the middle of a Avide
callow, that was in general inundated in the winter
months, and formed into a beautiful lake in the vicinity
of Dillonsgrove, which covered upwards of 200 acres,
and which, in the spring of the year vanished into some
deep gulfs and quarry-holes. The stock to which Mr.
Gerald Dillon referred was a large clutch of croaking
gulls, that took possession of this rock during those
months that man or beast could not approach them.
Tho' this was to be the dowry of Mrs. Dillon, she did not
live to enjoy it, as she died a few days after giving birth
to her second daughter. A more amiable woman could
not live, nor a more affectionate husband than Gerald
Dillon. Although he was a young man when his wife
died, he never married afterwards ; and it was more out
of raillery he got this deed drawn up (as the lady's
parents seemed so particular), than any intention of de-
priving his wife of that maintenance her rank and for-
tune entitled her to, as he idolized her — and his love
met a return, in the many virtues of the best of wives.
The two Misses Dillon, co-heiresses, possessed this
handsome estate after their father's death j the eldest
married Mr. Thomas Connor of Corristoona, a rural

157

villa on the Lyster estate, in this neighbourhood; and
, the second, a Mr. O'Brien, who called himself O'Brien
Dillon. The estate was divided between the brothers-
in-law ; the moiety of Dillons-Grove came to the lot of
Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien, and that part called Milltown,
near Castle-Plunkett, to Mr. and Mrs. Connor, on which
that gentleman built a handsome mansion called Mill-
town-House. The residence and demesne are worthy
of a more extensive patrimony, as the whole does not
exceed live hundred acres. The amiable Mrs. Connor,
after giving birth to two sons and one daughter, paid
that debt we must all do sooner or later, and was inter-
red in the vault of her noble ancestors in the beautiful
ruin of Tubbereloe, a short distance from the mansion
that gave her birth. The present inheritor, Roderick
Connor, is her eldest son; the other son died in the
army ; and the daughter married a Mr, Davis of the
County of Galway. After his wife's death, Mr. Thomas
Connor became a convert to Protestantism, in lieu of
which (as a reward for his piety) he was appointed High
Sheriff and a Magistrate of the County of Roscommon.
This sudden jump in the heir presumptive of the lowly
thatched cottage of Tubberfour, commonly called Cor-
ristoona, astonished many, as none in those days got to
be Sheriffs but staunch Cromwellians, or such as swal-
lowed the balsam of the " Immortal Memory." At this
time the great Sheriff assumed the name of O'Connor of
Milltown — a novel appendage in those days, and which
no person assumed but those immediately descended
from royalty. He not only done this, but also usurped
the two great lions (the Royal Oak and the valiant hand
of Ireland) from the O'Conors Don, and added them to
his great escutcheons. The new Sheriff became a zea-
lous neophyte, and could hardly bear (like the pious
Bishop Magee) a Popish domestic to debase or sully his
establishment — indeed so much so, that orange liveries

158

and trappings were his state clothing for the gaudy
phalanx that graced his equipage on the plains of Ros-
common. This magnificent appearance was the best
way in the world for borrowing money j besides, the
High Sheriff could give land security upon his son's
property, who was then a minor. As for poor Tom
himself, he had not so much as the breadth of his orange
mantle ; and it was by ways and means large sums of
money were raised, which the Sheriff never paid ; among
others, five h 'ndred pounds from Neaty Purcell of the
town of Roscommon, who died in the greatest want in
his old age. Thus, said the poor man, Tom Connor
done me neatly out of my five hundred pounds by pro-
mising what he never intended to pay — the principal or
the interest. By those means, that mighty pillar on the
ground of truth, called Milltown-House, was built, and
when nearly finished, the unfortunate undertaker was
killed by a fall from the scaffold. The poor serfs and
mechanics raised a great uproar about not getting paid
for their labour, but Mr. O'Connor said he paid the
undertaker, and added, that he did not employ them. —
Master Tom, as the ladies of Castle-Plunkett used to
call him during his widowhood, married Miss O'Flynn,
(the same lady that William Scimitar Burke described
so lovely in his lampoons,) the daughter of Coll O'Flynn
of Turla, in the County of Galway, Esq. By this union
he got about two thousand pounds. The old maid, in
her younger days, refused some of the best matches and
the most respectable connexions in that county. It was
not long after this marriage till Mr. Connor had to hide
himself from his creditors, of which it seems the kind
Magistrate was aware. Before he took possession of
the ark, as it was called, he built a round tower in the
g;arden, which was fenced in by a very high wall, and
to which there was no access but through this garden ;^
the windows looked pleasantly on some young planta-

159

tions and the beautiful plains of Bushfield. From the
different languages spoken at the bottom of this turret,
some addressing their debtor in Enghsh, others in Irish,
and a black servant (who waited on Master Tom) fre-
quently turning off the applicants in French, it got the
appellation of the Tower of Babel, The unfortunate
Miss O'Flynn was compelled to fly from MilltoAvn, with-
out even as much money as would bear her expenses to
the next village. Her misfortunes are too well known
in that country to shock the feelings of the reader, by
attempting to give even an outline of her privations ;
she lived solely by begging amongst those who knew
her in better days at the hospitable mansion of her
father, O'Flynn of Turla. This wretched woman died
at the hut of one Boland, on the mountains of her
ancestors, called the Mountains of O'Flynn, in the neigh-
bourhood of Castlerea, in this county ; and her husband
(if he deserved that name) died at a common hovel, near
Ballintober, some few years after. His brother, Denis
O'Connor of Willsbrook, was so disgusted with his con-
duct, that he built a burial place for himself and his
children, fearing that their bones should moulder in the
same grave. His son, Roderick O'Connor, married an
English lady, who died while Doctor Crumpe was in
the act of bleeding her at Milltown-House. In a short
time after he married one Bridget Browne, the widow
of blind Tom Wills of Perryborough, near Ballinlough.
Their eldest son was lately married to Miss M'Donnell
of Mayo. Mr. Roderick O'Connor, much to his credit,
is a very industrious gentleman ; he kept a brewery
some years, under the firm of Milltown and Co. He
unfortunately kept a private still, and one of his good
spies having given information against him, he was very
heavily fined, which embarrassed him very much. But
the good man's troubles did not end here : one Jack
Dillon, a noted informer, swore he was a defender, and

160

the consequence was that he was taken from his bed by
a troop of horse, and confined in the Castle of Athlone,
where the Handcocks, the Wood-cocks, and the No-
cocks sat as judges; but Mr. Rody was honourably
acquitted, and Jack Dillon was obliged to leave the
country, I think the good Newell is still watchman of
St. Mary's Parish, in the City of Dublin. Unfortunate
Dillon was first cousin to some rich graziers in that
neighbourhood, called the Irwins of Rathmile; and his
mother, a Miss Hinds, was respectably allied to the
O'Beirnes of Carrick-on-Shannon, and a long string of
those Dillons, Simpsons and Co.

Belgard Lodge, near Milltown, built by the late
Thomas Dillon of Belgard Castle, Esq., Is a rural villa,
and much improved by a Mr. Balfe, who resides there.
Mr. Dillon was maternally descended from the illustrious
family of Talbot ; his grandfather was brother to the
Duke of Tyrconnell, who was Viceroy of this kingdom
in the days of James the Second. He married Catherine
Howard, of the house of Norfolk. Henry Dillon, the
father of Thomas, married Miss Moore, a lady connected
with a very ancient Catholic family in the neighbour-
hood of Drogheda. Thomas Dillon married Miss Dowell
of Mantue, near Elphin, by whom he had no issue. —
His second wife was Miss O'Moore of Annabeg, near
Ballinasloe. He died while travelling in Wales, on his
way to join Mrs. Dillon in London. His death was
caused by a small contusion on his shin-bone, which he
met with coming from one of Lady Buckingham's grand
routes at the Castle of Dublin, and his going to sea so
soon after the accident inflamed his leg, which brought
on an immediate mortification. He made — or, at least,
he got some person at the miserable farm-house where
he died, to write a will, bequeathing fifteen hundred
pounds per annum to his Avife, whom he idolized, in
addition to her dowry. Yet Avoman is frail ! She met a

161

S^ed-foced Irishman of the name of O'Brady, while tra-
velling amongst those romantic scenes in Switzerland ;
and who could resist his charms ? He persuaded her,
by way of killing grief, to take a trip to the altar of
hymen, whicii she immediately assented to. Had Mr.
Thomas Dillon of Belgai'd Castle, who killed himself for
love, stopped in Dublin to have his shin-bone cured, he
might have lived many years longer. No : Mrs. Dillon
was a fascinating yoinig woman, and nothing but the
most urgent business could keep him from her. He
died without the benefit of his clergy — as the noble
abbey of St. David was robbed of its birth-right, not
so much as one of the priesthood that sanctified its walls
being allowed a successor. Alas ! the children that she
once gathered are gone astray after other gods, and a
new mode of worship — John Wesley, Joanna Southcote,
and the other Ranters and Jumpers that bundled amongst
them, weak people I — is their chosen guide to salvation,
while the true worship of the living God is considered
a mere mockery.

After the death of Tom Dillon, his hrother, an old
eccentric German officer, came in for the Dillon estates
in thje Counties of Dublin and Roscommon. He led a
single, though I cannot say a virtuous life. His servant,
one John College, ruled paramount at the house of Bel-
gard ; while that phlegmatic opulent grazier, Dick
Irwin, managed the tenantry and the private affairs in
the counti'y. Poor John Dillon was only tenant at will
in the house that ought to be his own ; no guest or rela-
lation were admitted to the old mansion at Belgard
Castle only those who had cap in hand to Mr. College ;
no leases or grants were made to any of the tenantry on
the Lisalvey manors, in Roscommon, no matter what
their claim or their respectability, unless through the
interference of Mr. Irwin. So infatuated was this old
bachelor, and so much was he undev the controul of

162

these worthy gentry, tljat wills were made, in which
legacies were left at their nod. While Dick Irwin held
the reins, not of tlie government, but the tenantry of
the house of Dillon, he, from being a very poor man,
tilling his own garden on a kind of a marsh called Pool-
Ranny, which he afterwards refined to Fernhall, accu-
mulated only the small board of about two hundred
thousand pounds ; and John College, who has recently
built a new street, near Brompton, in the County of
Middlesex, about sixty thousand pounds. This man
was only a raw recruit when Captain Dillon took him
into his service. In this way did strangers, who had
no pretension to family, fortune, or even a domestic
claim on tliis eccentric old bachelor, enrich thetnselves
and their friends at his expense, by giving them ways
and means, and long leases at a Ioav rent, while the
'ungrateful man left his own cousins (the Dillons of
Bracklon) actually begging as common mendicants
through the countiy. Any person that ever seen poor
Kit Dillon bending to the ground with a weighty incum-
brance of bags, packs, and leathern pooches, must feel
for him ; and the rest of the family were nothing better.
Captain Dillon died in London. He bequeathed his
estates to a Mr. Trant and the uncle of young Hearne
of Hearnesbrook, in the County of Galway, who died in
a French prison, in a fit of apoplexy, in 1809.

Castle-Plunkett, the ancient seat of the Plunkett fa-
mily, joins Belgard Lodge, commonly called Heathfield.

Ballinagare, the ancient scat of O'Conor, is within a
few miles of Castle-Plunkett, situated in a verdant val-
ley, adorned by a river, which empties itself into a ro-
mantic lake, called Loughbally, and is the present resi-
dence of O'Conor, who took the title of O'Conor Don on
the extinction of the house of Cloonalis. Major O'Conor,
who was cousin to O'Conor of Ballintober, married the
daughter of O'Rourke of Breffny Castle, His son, Charles

163

O'Conor, married the daughter of a merchant of the
name of Fagau — her mother was of the Taaffes of Sligo.
Charles O'Connor, speakmg of himself, says that in
marrying he yielded to the wishes of his father, who
made a sale of him for a few hundred pounds, of which,
he stood in need at the time. This lady was the mother
of Denis O'Conor and Charles O'Conor, who lived in the
neighbourhood of Boyle, of Hugh O'Conor, who became
an apostate, and thought to inherit the patrimony of
Ballinagare, and of two daughters, the elder of whom
married the Prince of Coolavin, and the younger, a Mr.
Higgins, who resided near Tuam ; Denis O'Conor mar-
ried Miss Browne of Cloonfad, near Elphinj Hugh,
Miss Connor of Corristown ; and Charles, if I am not
mistaken, a Miss MacDonnell of Knockranny, in the
neighbourhood of Castle-Tennison. The present O'Co--
nor Don married the accomplished Miss Moore, of
Mount-Brown near Dublin. Matthew O'Conor, of
Mountdruid, married Miss Forbes of the County Long-
ford : what family her mother was of, save that her name
was Peggy Farrell, I cannot say, but she had the money,
and that is introduction enough in these days ; Martin
and Roderick O'Connor died unmarried ; and the Rev.
Charles O'Connor, lately deceased, was in holy orders,
and Chaplain to the Duchess of Buckingham. Miss
O'Conor married her cousin, MacDermott of Coolavin :
another Miss O'Connor married a Mr. Lyons, of Lyons-
town near Boyle ^ and the youngest, that eminent phy-
sician and highly-bred gentleman. Doctor Shell, of Do-
negal. I almost forgot that there is another of these
ladies married to O'Donnell of Larkfield, near Bally-
shannon, in the County Donegal. Denis, the son of
O'Conor Don, is married to Miss Blake, of Tower Hill
in the County of Mayo, and his eldest daughter is mar-
ried to Mapother of Kiltevan, near Roscommon.

164

Frenchpark House is about two miles from Bailing-
gare. This was anciently the noble seat of the heirs of
O'Gara, which, on the failure of male issue, came to the
rich heiress of that house on her marriage with young
MacDermott of Coolavin, and was sold by their prodigal
son, Major MacDermott, to Patrick French, an eminent
merchant in the town of Galway, who became an apos-
tate in order to have the privilege of purchasing lands
and becoming a general merchant. Arthur, the son of
Patrick by a Miss Blake of Oran Castle, married Miss
Gore of Sligo. John and (I think) William French,
their sons, were drowned between Parkgate and Dublin.
Arthur, their successor, married a Miss Magenis of the
County of Fermanagh ; and George French was shot in
a duel by Lawder Crofton, of Moate near Roscommon. —
The late Member for Roscommon married the beautiful
and much-esteemed Miss Costello, of Edmondstown in
Mayo ; Henry French, the merchant, of Sackville-street,
married a Miss Lennon of Castletown ; George French,
the barrister, married Miss Jones of Stephen's green,
the kinswoman of Viscount Ranelagh, and the sister of
Mrs. Bolton, of Mayne House in the County of Louth ;
Dean French married his cousin. Miss JMaginnis, of
Deansfort in the County of Cavan | Richard and Wil-
liam French are as yet unmarried ; Miss French married
the late Daniel Kelly, Esq. of Cargins, by whom she had
one son ; her second husband was an officer in the army;
and she is now the wife of the Hon. James Butler, bro-
ther to the Earl of Kilkenny ; the second Miss French
married Captain Handcock of Athlone, whose son will
succeed to the title of Viscount Castlemaine after the pre-
sent Brunswicker closes his eyes upon Willybrook in
Westmeath -, the third Miss French married Mr. Gorge,
of Kilbrue, near Slane; and the fourth married Mr.
MoUoy, of Oakport near Boyle. The children of the
late Arthur French, Esq. are, the present Member for

Ids

Roscommon, who married the daughter of Christopher
Frencli MacDermott, Esq. of Cregga, near Elphin ; the
Rev. John French, Rector of Goresbridge in the County
of Kilkenny ; Fitzstephen French, Esq. ; and anotlier
son wliose name I forget. — Daughters : Mrs. Archdea-
con Digby, of the County of Longford ; Mrs. Owen
Lloyd, of Lisadurn ; and Mrs. Kelly of Cargins. Ano-
ther of these amiable daughters died in Bath, and is in-
terred with her mother in the old Church at Cheltenham.
The splendid hospitality of the house of Frenchpark is
too well known to need the biographer's display or eu-
logy. The annual rent-roll of that noble house amounts
to eighteen thousand pounds, of which the benev^olent
heirs are in every respect Avorthy, and no man more so
than the present inheritor. The family mansion and
the magnificent demesne are unquestionably in the
highest degree superior to any residence in that part of
the county. Captain French of Boyle, Counsellor French
of Kildare-street, and Miss French, who married WolfFe
the barrister, afterwards Viscount Kilwarden, are allied
to the Frenches of Frenchpark ; and the Frenches of
Galway are descended from the same ancestors.

There is no county in his Majesty's dominions more in
need of poor laws than Roscommon. The whole of the
aristocracy of this fine county are absentees, and the soil
is generally let to middlemen or opulent graziers, wiio
expel the small farmers and oppress the working slaves,
a class of persons called cotters, solely at the mercy of
these worthless monopolists, w^ho remove them at will,
and send themselves and their families begging through
the country ; their scanty pittance seldom exceeds four-
pence per day, for which they are obliged to work from
sun-rise to sun-set. After their toil they retire to their
wretched mud hut, suffering all those complicated pri-
vations and indescribable misfortunes at which nature
shudders in giving utterance. Hete the scene of misery

becomes (in many respects) too revolting to any person
that ever witnessed the humble and frugal repast of
comfortable cottagers in other countries. Even Wales,
with all her barren rocks and steep mountains — contrast
the comforts of the peasantry of that country with the
miseries, bad fare, and nudity of the same class in Ire-
land, and particularly on the beautiful plains of Boyle,
Rathcroughan, and Roscommon. In Wales, you find,
in its romantic glens, though covered with brushwood
and fur, a family, who have no other dependence but
their labour, living in a clean, well-furnished, humble
cottage, with glass windows to admit that light and the
rays of the sun, which heaven, with its great munifi-
cence, has bestowed to shine on the monster of in-
famy and oppression, as well as those who suffer with
patience, humility, and their confidence of being one
day released from their miseries, and restored to that
God who witnessed their wrongs. The family of the
Welsh cotter are neatly clothed in the russet of their
OAvn make — each person executing tlie duties imposed
upon them by their master or their parents, living in
mutual harmony and obedience with each other, and
co-operating for one end — that is, by their industry, to.
live in that mediocrity that would prevent them from
becoming troublesome to the parish, or to be placed un-
der the caprice and austere frown of a workhouse
matron. In the County of Roscommon, of which I have
a local knowledge, there is not in Europe a more poor
and wretched peasantry. Look to the cotters or serfs
on the lands of the rich Jack Farrell, Walter Balfe,,
Dick Irwin, John Flanagan, Luke Harkan, Michael
Plunkett, and the Elwoods, near Boyle — and see the
huts and the few wattles that alone prevents them from
living as miserable as the Hindoos or African tribes,
M'ho have the advantage of a sultry climate ; their little
fire placed in the middle of a crib, supported by a few

\67

loose stones at the back — and the smoke, from the stinch
of Aveeds and what is called mud turf, is quite intoler-
able, and changes the very aspect and caps of the females
to yellow hue — distorting their countenances and mak-
ing their eyes of a reddish colour. Their fare is nothing
but potatoes, and in general not even a sufficiency of
that useful and nutritious vegetable ; and at night no-
thing to lay their weary limbs upon but a wad of straw,
or damp rushes, generally termed a shake-down.—
These people suffer such privations, that a salt herring
%vould be considered a greater luxury than a bason of
turtle soup at Sheriff Flood's (immortal memory) dinner
would be to Father Abraham. The unfortunate people
are also obliged to pay at the rate of eight or ten guineas
an acre for sand, for what they term potato soil, to sup-
port their family — and earn the rent by going to Eng-
land in the harvest months, or working at home for the
miserable pittance of four-pence per day, without so
much as a cup of water to cool their tongue. Another
Infamous system practised in this country, is the extort-
ing work from the rustic tenantry, in addition to the
most exorbitant rent, and a duty of fowl. I have known
big Tom Magrath, who lived many years in Castlerea,
and who was what is generally termed a middle-man,
to charge his tenantry annually, seven geese, seven
ducks, seven turkeys, and a dozen of fat pullets, each.
Big Dick Irwin, who was agent to the Dillons of Bel-
gard, in this County, for forty years got his turf cut,
saved, and finally left in his haggard, and his potato
and other requisite labour done, without one penny of
expence through the whole year — a gross imposition on
the tenantry of this weak absentee family. It cer-
tainly was a most oppressive grievance to see the cattle
of a whole district pounded to enforce manual labour,
for an upstart and tyrannical deputy agent, who raised
himself into opulence by such voracious and unjustifiable

166

imposition, and to expect the labour of tlie poor, which
is their only wealth, merely because he was authorised
to receive rent by their landlord. I could quote a thou-
sand others, but indeed few who carried their exactions
to so gross an extent as Mr. Irwin, who had the tenantry
of three thousand acres solely under his merciless con-
troul and jurisdiction. Undoubtedly, Mr. Dick Irwin
was a very efficient and useful agent, as in later days he
could accommodate his Lord with money to any amount,
until his rents became due ; and I am bound to say that
he was an honest man in other respects ; and had he
not thought these base exactions the system of the
country, and pursued by his predecessors, he would not
perhaps have demanded the labour of the widow, the or-
phan, and the wretched peasant. There is another set
of persons called tithe-procters, who are the greatest
possible annoyance to the poor serfs and struggling far-
mers. These pestiferous and unconscionable knaves go
about, not like methodist preachers and swaddling old
maids, doing good, but sowing the seed of discord, eccle-
siastical litigation, and pressing the poor and needy to
the earth with more rapacity than even the statute with
all its careful enactments authorises. In consequence
of the exactions of these wasps (I cant say bees) gather-
ing the spiritual honey for the pious divines who have
not even the pretext of a parish church, nor a resident
clergy, the Popish population derive no benefit whatever
from their hard praying and perpetual fasting. But this
I can verify, that the two gentlemen I had the honour
of knowing as rapacious tithe-proctors in the district
where my poor father lived, who was nothing more nor
less than a struggling farmer, were two of the greatest
rogues (and were convicted as such) that the Church
triumphant could boast of as the most efficient and as-
,siduous in gathering Peter's pence. For fear that any
person would think that what I say is false, I give their

m

169

names and residence : — the first of these honest thieves
\Vas one James Fallon, who lived as a deputy-proctor
under the Reverend Thomas Young of Castlerea. The
Rector, chiefly resided in Bath, from vrhich, when the
wind permitted, he sent his spiritual benediction to his
Popish parishioners, as there was not so much as one
Protestant, save poor Tom Connor of Milltown, in two or
three rich unions. Honest Jemmy Fallon, God rest him
poor soul, (I am afraid he is in need of being prayed for)
generally levied an annual cess on the good people of
his walk (as he called it) of half-a-crown upon each
house, a few fat pullets, some rolls of fresh butter, and
dozens of new laid eggs, with a few hanks of yarn for
linen to his children. These private gifts were for giv-
ing a false report, by putting down only one acre in
place of three, and so on. After living many years on
his means genteelly, as a prop of the Church and a base
and worthless extortioner of the wretched people who
were so weak as to bribe him, Mr. Young banished him
as an unfit person to hold the situation any longer. His
successor, well known as squinty-ey'd Tom Minchin,
was by far a more rapacious character. He held the
situation some years before he was detected in his vil-
lainy, and shared in no small degree the confidence of
the Sandford family — he being constable and proctor ;
and, in short, his nod seemed to carry more integrity
with it than another person's oath. However, after his
long career in this way, (not until he had accumulated
some money) the pious man, who was a class leader, and
sometimes a preacher at the Methodist meetings in this
town, being the child of avarice from his birth, the
demon of darkness tempted him to forge a receipt to
the amount of seven hundred pounds, upon as upright
a man (though weak in many respects) as ever was
born, Henry Moore, Baron Mount-Sandford. On being

z

170

convicted, in the Court-house of Roscommon, before the
late Judge Osborne, in 1813, he was sent to prison for
life ; but through the interference of his wife, the daugh-
ter of a saddler of the name of Cotton, and the cousin
of the Curate of St. Anne's, he was liberated some time
after the Noble Lord's death.

FINIS.

[A Second Volume of Mr. Gibbon's " Recollections"
will appear in the course of the ensuing month.]

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